


The Go Down

by used_songs



Category: House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Horror, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Avengers (2012), Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-17 11:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15459966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/used_songs/pseuds/used_songs
Summary: The Tempest At Galveston: 'We Knew There Was A Storm Coming, But We Had No Idea'





	1. Too Narrow to Contain Itself

_“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life… there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.” ― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest_

They piled out of the SUV into the hot, wet, late morning air as Iron Man landed on the street next to the vehicle and flipped up his faceplate. The sky above was bleached white with just a few clouds standing motionless in the heavy air. Steve stood still for a moment, shaking the kinks out of his legs, his hand shading his eyes from the sun as he looked at the house.  He sighed, already tired. “Well,” Tony offered after a long moment of staring first at Steve and then at the exterior of the house. “I’m not impressed. This place is a dump. How is it still standing?” He shifted his weight to one side.

“It is considered an historic site. However, I believe it is under threat of being demolished if funds are not found to restore it,” JARVIS offered via the comm in the helmet, loud enough that the others could only just hear him as well.

“They should let it go,” Tony replied absently, looking up and down the street. “Problem solved. I don’t understand why people insist on hanging on to the past.” Bruce shook his head and smiled, looking down at the grass. The air was very still, but a few blades of parched and rolled St. Augustine ruffled as a ladybug climbed laboriously over them. Bruce shuffled over carefully to avoid disturbing it.

“Says the man who still owns a boarded up mansion on Fifth Avenue,” said Natasha. “How much do you pay in property taxes for a house you never set foot in?”

“Wait, you still own the mansion?” Steve asked, sideswiped by memories, his head snapping around so he could look directly at Tony.

“What’s it to you?” Tony asked sharply, avoiding Steve’s eyes. He flexed his fingers in order to feel the narrow metal plates shift and click over his skin.

“I don’t know. I just … I remember going there.” Steve’s shoulders slumped minutely.

“Whoopie,” Tony said dryly, his brows drawn down in a frown. “Let it go.”

“I see Stark is giving you the old high hat, Cap,” Clint said and approximated a Groucho Marx eyebrow waggle.

Steve rolled his eyes, straightening. “Clint, enough! Can you stop using the slang you found on the internet? I never talked like that, and I think you wore it out last week anyway.” He put his hands on his hips.

Tony snorted and Clint said, “Shake a leg, team. Let’s make sure this mission is eggs in coffee.” Bruce hid a grin behind one hand.

“Clint -.”

“Do you know what that’s called?” Natasha interrupted, pointing at the collapsing cupola on the battered roof. She walked around the front of the SUV and stood balancing on the cracked curb, flexing the muscles in her legs to stretch them a little. Tony cocked his head disinterestedly, then walked forward to jerk the padlock off of the battered chain link gate at the foot of the driveway. He dropped it into the grass with a dull chunk and then looked back up at the roofline.

“What? That?” asked Clint. “The tower?” He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck.  The house wasn’t fancy, no Victorian gingerbread or extravagant trim. It did, however, seem to have large windows, although they were currently boarded up with large pieces of weathered plywood. It stood on an overgrown double lot that had been roughly enclosed with chain link fencing that sagged under a heavy weave of weeds and vines.

“It’s a widow’s walk.” She smiled, a small and almost private expression. “A lot of the older houses on coastlines have them. For looking out to sea.”

 “Looking out to sea to see if you’re a widow,” replied Clint. “That’s not romantic at all.”

“I didn’t say it was romantic, Barton.” She strode toward the house. Steve stood for a moment longer, narrowing his eyes in the sunlight, and regarding the house. Then he followed her inside. As Clint fussed with his equipment, Bruce hung back, turning to look around at the houses around them with a frown on his face. Although this house was in the worst shape, none of the homes on this block looked to be in good repair. They all had the weatherbeaten look of buildings that had to withstand wind and salt water on a daily basis.

“What’s up, Big Guy?” Tony said, waiting next to the open gate.

Bruce shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I thought we’d be able to see the water from here. Otherwise, why would there be a widow’s walk up there?” He squinted up into the sun, the heat of a South Texas late summer on his face.

“Good point. How about I see if the view’s any different from up there?” Tony offered. He looked around as well. “Have you noticed how beach communities either look insanely expensive or really trashy … or both?” Bruce frowned at him and Tony raised his hands defensively, careful not to activate the repulsors. “Sorry! Insensitive, I know. But after reading the file, I just figured it would look a lot less like a backwater where you go to buy bait and cheap beer and pick up beach bunnies.” Bruce shook his head and turned to follow Natasha, leaving Tony on the broken sidewalk.

“Good going. You really impressed him with your famously dickish ways,” Clint said, clapping the armor on the shoulder. “Smart dudes love that shit.” He shook his head when Tony twitched away from him. “Come on. Let’s case the joint. Just this time, I’ll go low and let you go high, but just this time.” Tony shrugged, watching Bruce’s back as he entered the house, then flipped the faceplate down. The eye slits in his helmet glowed blue.

Tony muttered to himself, “After this, I wanna go to the Pleasure Pier. That sounds fun. Make a note, JARVIS. Pleasure Pier. I saw it on the way in.” He activated the repulsors and darted up into the air, making a wide loop around the house and then spiraling in tighter.

 

Natasha made quick work of the rudimentary lock on the door and then pried it open. The damaged piers had caused one side of the house to sag a little, and it wasn’t easy to wrestle the door open without further splintering the framing around it. As they walked inside, she let the door swing loosely shut, leaving a crack of bright white sunlight shining into the dim interior. Illuminated motes drifted through the slice of light.

“Oh wow,” Bruce said when they walked into the large main entryway. The main feature of the room was an oversized spiral staircase that rose up through the ceiling to the next floor. “Do you think it goes all the way to the roof?” He gazed upward, ignoring the slight feeling of vertigo that swept over him.

“Unlikely,” replied Natasha. “I’m not eager to find out. It doesn’t look like it would hold our weight.” She gingerly brushed her fingers along the rough edge of the newel cap, her index finger following a split in the wood. “There’s been salt water in here. Look.”

Is this all you have?

I couldn’t get all of it. Some of the files were corrupted. And we’re still having some trouble translating the others.

There isn’t much here. It’s all in fragments.

I’m not a miracle worker. You’re lucky I could recover this much. That storage device must’ve been submerged for, I don’t know, fifty of their years? A hundred?

True. True. Well, have you reviewed all of it? Is there anything in there about the house?

It’s fragmentary. I think we can piece together the main sequence of events, but there’ll be lots of missing details. And as for what it all means … well, I just don’t know. If this is where it all happened … we need to know more in order to analyze all of the repercussions.

That’ll have to be good enough. Analysis is over-rated. OK. So, let’s try to put this puzzle together.

It’s fragmentary  fragmentary  fragmentary fragmentary the house. It’s fragmentary -.

Not again. Damn it. Can somebody fix this for me? I need a technician here!

The ocean the ocean the ocean the beast the monster the the the -.

Shit. I knew we should’ve closed it when we first found out it was there. I’m as loath to destroy an inhabited planet as the next person, but our squeamishness ended up causing a lot of problems every single time we move back through this junction. Has anyone else been there yet?

[unintelligible]

Well? What did they say about it? Are we still in danger?

[unintelligible]

That’s not very helpful.

[unintelligible]

I’m losing the connection again. I swear to -.

Brbrbrbruuuuuutaroooonyaanananananano

Why can’t the technology work right just once? That’s all I ask. Just once. Damn this thing.

__

The water in this place was so white, like milk slopping against the solid legs of the pier and the granite blocks. White. How could that be, though? Was it the sand? Or was there something under the edge of the water, held back by surface tension? Some bright light … maybe it was whatever turns the tips of waves foamy and innocent like soap bubbles. No … never mind. It was like tubs to the whales here. None of this was important. Here … sweep it off the desktop and into the trash.

Now. Clean slate. But why would something horrible be hidden in the light? Never mind.

Steve looked out over the water of the Gulf, gray in the sunlight under a blue sky so pale that it looked white. He shivered. It wasn’t often that he felt small and powerless, but there was something dragging at him. There were squirming, rotating triangles of colored light framing his vision, the harbingers of a migraine. He frowned. He hadn’t had a migraine since before the serum. Tension headaches, sure. Stress. But no migraines. He sighed, hoping that it wouldn’t last.

He breathed carefully, his head throbbing with his pulse.

_“Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke_

“Hey, Cap. Whatcha doing?” Tony stopped next to him on the sand.

He shrugged. “Just looking at the water.” He glanced over at the other man. Tony was standing with his hands in his pockets, his eyes hidden behind colored lenses. He frowned. “Where’s the suit?”

Tony glanced over at him, his head cocked. “What?”

He frowned. “Where’s the Iron Man suit?”

Tony barked out a laugh, his mouth twisting in an ugly grin. “Why? Where’s your suit?”

Steve looked down at himself. Chinos and a dark brown shirt. He frowned. “What’s … Stark, how did we get here? To the beach?” He felt the pressure building in his head, the incense from the censer, smoke swaying in the still air, as if his temples could collapse and let the entire edifice fall. Collāpsus collāpsī collāpsī collāpsōrum collāpsō collāpsīs collāpsum collāpsōs collāpsō collāpsīs collāpse collāpsī aedificium aedificia aedificiī aedificiōrum aedificiō aedificiīs aedificium aedificia aedificiō aedificiīs aedificium aedificia

Tony stilled. “Are you OK, Cap?” Tentatively, he put a hand on Steve’s upper arm. Steve shook his head carefully, sending fireworks jutting out over the Gulf, and rubbed his forehead with one hand. He frowned, eyes squeezed shut. “Come on, Cap,” Tony said. “Let’s go back. Come on,” he coaxed. “You’re going to give yourself wrinkles.”

“I can’t … Tony …” The smoke, white and fragrant, boiling behind his eyes.

Tony stilled, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “What’s the problem?”

“I can’t look away from,” Steve broke off to gesture toward the water. “From this … it’s like I’m in a dream.” He looked out of the quinjet’s window at the tall glass buildings below as they turned in the sky to land at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base. No. Not that. That’s wasn’t right.

Tony reached over, like he would never do, and slipped a strong hand around Steve’s arm, just above the elbow. “Now you know it’s a dream, because I’m pretty sure you’d never let me do this.” He tugged and Steve felt his feet move sluggishly in the sand, turning him away from the scene. He would never do this.

As they passed the confessional,Steve turned his head and caught a glimpse of his mother slipping inside. But his feet dragged him away before he could say anything to her.  He could hear her voice, greeting the priest.  _  
_

_“Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick_

 

 

Fury: This is Director Nicholas Fury. The mission debrief began at … 7:48 PM, Central Standard Time. Location: Houston, Texas, United States, SHIELD Broom 6. Present are -.

Unidentified voice 1: Look, can we just -.

Fury: In light of what occurred, it’s necessary that we go through the proper procedure. Presen-.

Unidentified voice 1: Maybe the proper procedure should’ve involved a complete pre-mission report before we were sent into that house blind.

Unidentified voice 2: I have to agree with him, Director.

Unidentified voice 1: It’s almost like you set us up. Hm, Nicky, why would you do that? I’m not going to sit here with someone who lied -.

Fury: I will release all of you as soon as we debrief the incident that occurred in Galveston. It’s vital that we -.

Unidentified voice 3: This is stupid. Why -.

Fury: Sit down! We’re not done here.

Unidentified voice 1: I am. C’mon, Clint. Let’s go see if Nat’s out of medical.

_The sound of chairs being dragged across the floor and a door opening._

Fury: Stark! Barton!

Unidentified voice 2: Let them go, sir. It was a bad mission. I’ll do the debrief, if necessary, but then I need to get back to my team. I couldn’t even get Bruce to show up here. If we’re lucky he’s waiting for us at the tower. And Thor -.

_There is a lengthy pause in the recording, possibly as long as a minute. It is possible that some of the audio has been masked._

Fury: Very well, Captain Rogers. When you do get back, I need you to have a conversation with your team about procedures and about team discipline. Those two are already on a short leash, especially Barton.

Rogers: With all due respect, sir, you didn’t give us a good pre-mission brief. And as a result, Natasha was injured and Bruce lost control of the Hulk, and I don’t see that we achieved anything except for some bad press. Thor thinks we saved something called the multiverse, but I didn’t see any evidence of that. If we had gone in with good information, a lot of problems could’ve all been avoided. It really does feel like we were set up.

Fury: Agent Sitwell confirmed with me that you were given all of the relevant information prior to the mission. He claims your team didn’t read the briefing materials.

Rogers: Come on, sir. You know … look … Sitwell claims Tony Stark didn’t read the briefing packet? You know he did, even if it was just so he could pick it to pieces and make the rest of us look incompetent.

Fury: That’s … probably true. OK. I will look into this with the agents here. Now, let’s go through the debrief so you can get back to the tower.

“No, Cap, I can’t accept that some things are unknowable.” Tony delivered that pronouncement with the air of someone starting an argument for the fun of it. Steve suppressed his irritation and reached for the bowl of pasta in the center of the table.

“Some people would say there is something beautiful about the unknowable, about mysteries,” he said mildly.

“Those people are not scientists.” Tony took a small bite of pasta and then gestured airily with his fork. “For instance, I am not OK with how things went down in Galveston.”

The temperature of the room seemed to drop, like ice pitched into a highball glass, and Bruce looked uncomfortable. Tony smiled a little bitterly. “Now don’t all freak out on me. We were all there. We saw what we saw. Tell me you’re OK with any of that,” he challenged, stabbing an asparagus spear with the tines of his fork.

Steve caught his eye across the table. “You know we aren’t OK with it. You know that. But -.”

Bruce cut in. “I think we don’t have the instruments, the technology or the sensory equipment in our bodies, to truly measure and understand what we saw.”

“So how do we test to destruction? How do we … how do we make sure it doesn’t happen again?” Tony swallowed, looking down at his dinner. He dropped his fork against the edge of the plate with a loud clatter and the sound echoed in the room like a ringing bell.

“I’m not sure we can. But Thor thinks the incursion is over and that the clock has been reset, so it’s not something we should have to worry about in our lifetimes.”

“That’s not good enough,” Tony said, his voice rising. “I need answers. I need to know that the problem is solved and we can draw a line under it.”

“Tony, we can’t solve everything.”

 


	2. The Historical Record

_“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill_ _House_ _, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” ― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill_ _House_

**NOTES**

_The mayor looks exhausted, upset, worried. Don’t forget to follow up on the allegations that Viastone is attempting to force sales of houses in two neighborhoods on the island and the mayor is somehow involved._

Aweys: Sir, what do you say to complaints about this house that go back at least 30 years, complaints that have yet to be addressed by city government?

de la Fuente: We have so many projects that need our attention here in Galveston. For instance, we need to shore up the seawall. You know, I was reading about climate change and the impact upon coastal communities, and we’re really the front line. What happens to the mainland if these islands go? So, we have a lot of projects that need our attention and, honestly, this “haunted” house wasn’t very high up on my personal list.  But when I received the email [Fig. 2] on December 16, 2012 from Councilwoman Fonseca, I knew we were going to have to do something about the property.

Aweys: Fonseca has been after your position for several years, hasn’t she?

de la Fuente:  That’s irrelevant. She is a trusted colleague who only wants what’s best for this city. She brought up some genuine concerns. However, the thing is, it’s a historical property. It even survived the storm of 1900 almost undamaged. So tearing it down is not on the table. The historical commission wouldn’t allow it. But there’s no denying it’s a problem. It’s a magnet for crime.

Aweys: Are you saying that the crime statistics provided by the Galveston police department are accurate? Some of the people living in the neighborhood have disputed -

de la Fuente: If you’re asking whether I’ve gone over that list with a magnifying glass, the answer is of course no. The basic point stands though, regardless of worries that people in the area might have about the resale value of their own homes. The real issue, though, is what happened with the so-called superheroes. That whole mess tells me that we need to do something constructive with the site, maybe turn it into a museum or, I don’t know, a bed and breakfast or something.

Aweys: Is it true that there are developers looking to purchase this building, along with several others in the area, and reports of problems have been exaggerated in order to facilitate a sale?

de la Fuente: That’s … that’s ridiculous. We’re done here.”

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/42963404234)

**Mayor Speaks Candidly About Recent Turmoil**

\- Faduma Aweys, _Galveston Daily Chronicle_

City News - Faduma Aweys: When asked about the recent protests in district 7 over the incident with the Avengers, Mayor de la Fuente stated, "We have so many projects that need our attention here in Galveston. We need to shore up the seawall. Think about climate change and the impact upon coastal communities; we’re really the front line. What happens to the mainland if these islands go? The house wasn’t high up on my to-do list."

Councilwoman Sandra Fonseca has requested that the structure be demolished, something that is not possible due to its historical status. "I did receive the email on December 16, 2012 from Councilwoman Fonseca. She has genuine concerns. However, it’s a historical property. It survived the storm of 1900. Tearing it down is not on the table. But it is a magnet for crime."

The mayor and council have no plans to demolish the historic mansion despite its troubled status. Police have stepped up patrols in the area and started a neighborhood watch. "The real issue," said the mayor, "is what happened with the so-called superheroes. That whole mess tells me that we need to do something constructive with the site, maybe turn it into a museum or, I don’t know, a bed and breakfast or something."

It remains to be seen what the council will decide.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/42972480394)

“The answer is here, Betty,” Bruce said, sweeping all of the papers he had dumped out onto the table into messy piles. “It’s here. I just have to find it.”

Betty stared at him evenly, the sunlight through the kitchen window tinting her hair and skin, making her shine. “Bruce, it’s OK if there isn’t an answer,” she said calmly.

“What kind of scientist are you?” he replied angrily. “Don’t you see how important this is? I need … I need an answer.”

“We don’t always get what we need,” she said and then she looked away, turned and studied the view outside of the window. “You know that.”

Bruce started working his way through the documents, his eyes scanning for key words.

“The answer is here, General,” Bruce said, sweeping the mouse across the screen as he clicked rapidly through the files. “It’s here. I just have to find it.”

“What kind of scientist are you, Banner?” Ross said angrily.

“The answer is here, Tony,” Bruce said, his hands manipulating the holographic projection that hung in the air between them. Then he stopped and looked. “I didn’t know your eyes were blue.”

Tony laughed, “What are you talking about, Big Guy? My eyes are brown. They always have been. What are you looking for anyway?”

“The answer.”

“What’s the question though?” Tony asked, glancing to the side when a loud metal against metal screech echoed through the workshop. “DUM-E, cut it out!” he yelled.

“The answer is here, Tony,” Bruce said. “It’s here. I just have to find it.”

Tony looked back at him, stared at him evenly with eerie blue eyes that weren’t his own. “Bruce, it’s OK if there isn’t an answer,” he said calmly.

“What kind of scientist are you?” he replied angrily. “Don’t you see how important this is? I need … I need an answer.”

“We don’t always get what we need,” he said and then he looked away. “Sometimes I think we never do.”

Bruce started working his way through the documents, his eyes scanning for key words.

“The answer is here, Tony,” Bruce said. “It’s here. I just have to find it.”

Tony looked back at him, stared at him evenly with eerie blue eyes that weren’t his own. “Bruce, it’s OK if there isn’t an answer,” he said calmly.

Bruce took a deep breath. “This isn’t real.” And then he fell into darkness, spinning down into the depths below the house, followed by two blue fireflies. As he fell, he could feel his muscles and skin ripping, the gamma pouring green and always new, a lit fuse, and the terrible roar … the terrible roar as he blinked out of existence.

The monster hit the ground with enough force to shake the earth, branches quivering, swing set chains creaking. With a swing of one broad arm he unraveled the chain link fence that tasted of salt and battery spark and tossed it across the street, the pole dragging a white line in the oil tar road. The water was just a trickle, easing over the humped road in tiny rivulets, bowing up on the edge as surface tension battled it back. He roared and the world shook again. The water crept more and more fingers over the road, raising discarded gas station cups and cigarette butts from the bar ditch. The grass drowned.

 

The Hunter has to be careful. Walk carefully and silently. Gently push aside the branches. Avoid the traps of noise and disorder. If the Hunter isn’t careful, the Prey will escape.

The monster looked up in wonder; the long dirt road in front was shadow dappled, covered over with impossibly tall trees that filtered out the sky. The roof of the world. “ _This my house,”_ the monster thought. “ _Mine. Safe.”_

The ground was cool, little clouds of dust when he picked up and put down his feet.

“Tiny world. Small.” The monster leaned to the left and brushed a large hand through the foliage, startling a small yellow butterfly that leapt up and then settled again on the back of his hand. He squinted at the tiny stick legs, like two-dimensional lines on a green plane, and the delicate, sandy wings. He held his breath. _“Bug,”_ he thought. It flew away as he watched and he walked the road again.

After a long time, the trees grew smaller and eventually vanished and he was in the middle of a wide field, the road gone under sharp swords of green and sticker burrs. In the field small white puff animals walked and stood and chewed. He looked down and saw an anomaly. A tiny dark cloud, looking up at him. He scooped it up, held it in a broad hand. Passed an index finger over its body.

Then its precise mouth opened up, white white teeth touching air, and a cry like stumbling. A baby cry. He touched it again, more gently, with one finger. “Shouty baby sheep,” he said wonderingly. “Curly.”

Ovis aries. Artiodactyla, even-toed ungulates.  
“Shouty.” He petted.  
Taxonomic Hierarchy  
Kingdom Animalia  – Animal, animaux, animals      
Subkingdom Bilateria        
Infrakingdom Deuterostomia        
Phylum Chordata  – cordés, cordado, chordates                   
Subphylum Vertebrata  – vertebrado, vertébrés, vertebrates       
Infraphylum Gnathostomata         
Superclass Tetrapoda        
Class Mammalia Linnaeus, 1758 – mammifères, mamífero, mammals         
 Subclass Theria Parker and Haswell, 1897                
 Infraclass Eutheria Gill, 1872          
Order Artiodactyla Owen, 1848 – artiodactyls, porco do mato, veado, cloven-hoofed ungulates, even-toed ungulates                    
Family Bovidae Gray, 1821 – antelopes, cattle, goats, sheep, bovids            
Subfamily Caprinae Gray, 1821      
Genus Ovis Linnaeus, 1758 – sheep            
Species Ovis aries Linnaeus, 1758 – Red Sheep, domestic sheep, mouflon, sheep (feral)                 

From somewhere deep and dark, he dredged up, “Sleep. Sleep. Count sheep.” An incantation, soothing. He ran his hand down the side of his thigh.

Direct Children:                    
Subspecies Ovis aries aries Linnaeus, 1758               
Subspecies Ovis aries arkal Eversmann, 1850          
 Subspecies Ovis aries cycloceros Hutton, 1842      
 Subspecies Ovis aries isphahanica Nasonov, 1910                
 Subspecies Ovis aries laristanica Nasonov, 1909                   
 Subspecies Ovis aries musimon (Pallas, 1811)        
 Subspecies Ovis aries ophion Blyth, 1841 – urial  
 Subspecies Ovis aries orientalis Gmelin, 1774 – mouflon (western Asia)  
 Subspecies Ovis aries vignei Blyth, 1841 – urial

Bruce looked around, exhausted. Then he dropped the book he was holding onto the library table with a bang.  The other patrons in his area looked up with irritation and his Starkphone buzzed against the wood of the table.

_Betty: Are you almost done?_

_Bruce: Betty?_

_Betty: Yes! Do you have someone else you’re texting with?_

_Bruce: No! But Betty … this …_

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he said loudly, standing up.

“Hey, buddy, pipe down,” the woman nearest him said with irritation. “Some of us are trying to get some work done before finals.”

“Finals?” he echoed dumbly, looking around. “This is … this is wrong.”

“Hey, take it outside, friend,” she said. “I have a monster of an exam tomorrow I’m trying to prep for and you aren’t helping.”

He looked at her for a moment, then pushed in his chair and walked toward the exit. He was almost to the door when someone grabbed his arm, “Bruce! Excellent! Come with me.” Tony dragged him to the private elevator that went straight to the penthouse. The door opened when they were within a few feet of it and shut immediately behind them, cutting them off from the curious stares from the lobby. He felt the difference in gravity as the elevator moved smoothly upward.

He pulled away from Tony, who was saying something about chemical bonds and tapping on his phone, and leaned against the elevator wall, his palms flat on the metal surface behind him. “Tony? Why were you in the library?” The flood of words stopped and Tony slid his mobile into his trouser pocket.

“The library?”

“I was … I was in the library. I think I was in college and then you were … you were there. What was I doing when you saw me in the lobby?”

Tony shrugged. “JARVIS, what was Dr. Banner doing in the lobby?”

“Dr. Banner had just spoken with the receptionist on duty about a package he was expecting. He finished his conversation and was moving toward elevator number 6 when you intercepted him.”

“Thanks, J.” Tony quirked an eyebrow at him. “Sound familiar, Big Guy?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not at all. That is not at all what’s been happening. Do you remember anything about a trip to Galveston, Texas? For SHIELD?” His head was spinning, something important just out of his reach.

Tony pursed his lips slightly looking dubious. “No. Should I?” He took his sunglasses off and placed them in the inner pocket of his jacket.

Bruce shook himself. “Yes. You should. But something is going on. There’s some kind of anomaly, something twisting space and time, and we’re entangled in it somehow.” He could feel the Hulk calling inarticulately to him from deep within. ‘Not now!’ he thought.

Tony sank to the stairs next to him and leaned against him lightly. “Brucie? You said there was an anomaly?” He grimaced and tried to wipe the sand off of his hands.

Bruce groaned. “I was out! I got out and I was in the tower with you trying to explain what’s happened and now we’re back here again. Damn it!”  He reached over and ran the tips of his fingers lightly over Tony’s hand. No trace of metal. “Where’s the armor?”

Tony sighed. “I don’t know. I woke up here with you and it was gone. Maybe it’s with Barton.”

 

_Précis_

There are reports going back to 1900 about various phenomena at the location. This location was flooded in the Galveston Hurricane and shortly afterward, during the rebuilding phase, reports began of

 

... I can't read anymore. They ... my entire family was killed. I just can't do it.

It's OK.

 

 “What is this place?” Thor asked, his voice strangely dampened and hushed in the dimness of the large room. “It feels as though contains magic, yet Friend Stark tells me there is no magic in Midgard.”

Steve gripped his shield more tightly, his nerves dancing with tiny electric shocks. “Fury said SHIELD thinks it’s a portal to another dimension and they need it shut down before anything else comes through. Or anyone goes through.” He looked around. “Even though it just looks like an ordinary house to me.”

Bruce squinted down at the scanner in his left hand, adjusting his glasses with his right. “While I think we’re all nervous about portals for all the right reasons, I’m not getting any anomalous readings. If there was a portal in this house, it doesn’t seem to be here anymore.” He looked at the others. “I don’t think there’s anything here.”

 “Nothing is ever that easy, Doc,” said Natasha as she walked past them. “Let’s check the rest of the house. Where the hell is Stark anyway?”

Steve sighed. “He and Clint are completing the check of the perimeter and the exterior.” He looked around. “Let’s get this over with.” He followed Natasha down the short hallway into another room. Behind him, he could hear Thor talking quietly to himself and shifting Mjölnir from hand to hand. Thor. He stopped and turned back. “Thor?”

“Yes, Friend?”

“Were you here before? When we arrived?”

“I know not the meaning of your question, my friend,” Thor replied.

“Did you ride with us? Or fly in with Iron Man?”

Thor cocked his head. “I … I know not.”

“What do you remember?”

“I was speaking with Stark in his workshop, asking about the function of his járngreipr and then … I was in this chamber with you.” Thor’s expression was troubled.

 

After he had scanned the room completely, Bruce straightened abruptly, feeling suddenly lightheaded and a little queasy. He looked down at the scanner to see if this was a response to some measurable phenomenon, but the readings continued to be normal.

“Everything OK, Bruce?” asked Steve.

“Did you feel anything just now?”

“I have the beginnings of a headache.” Steve looked at him blankly. “I just noticed it.”

Bruce frowned. “Is that normal?”

Steve thought for a moment. “Not really. I only get them when I’m really tired or under a lot of stress.”

“Hm.” Bruce called out, “Thor, Natasha, do either of you feel anything strange?”

Natasha shrugged. “I feel a little nauseated.”

Thor replied, “I feel like something brushed Yggdrasil. Like something is trying to come through.” He shifted his hammer from one hand to the other and faint tracers of light seemed to crawl over his armor.

Bruce shook his head. “I’m getting nothing here, but we all felt it, whatever it was.” He activated his comm. “Tony, Clint, did you feel anything unusually a moment ago?”

There was no response, not even white noise or the familiar depth in sound that meant JARVIS was on the channel. Steve looked at Bruce, his eyebrows raised. Natasha strode quickly to the door and looked out, craning her head to search the sky. She called back into the room, “I don’t see them.”

Steve muttered something under his breath and walked to the doorway, brushing past Natasha. “Clint! Hawkeye!” he yelled. He stepped out onto the cement stairs and looked up toward the roof. “Where are they? Why can’t Stark follow directions just once?”

“It’s not just Tony,” Bruce said evenly. “They’re both out of contact. Based on the dossier we received, I don’t think we should assume it was voluntary.” He ran his palms down the sides of his thighs, a self-soothing gesture that seemed to help keep him calm.

Steve grimaced and tried the comm. “JARVIS, do you have locations on Iron Man and Hawkeye?”

This time, the comm line echoed with a long bass tone that cut off abruptly and then the sound of waves.

 

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/43642145432)


	3. The Handwriting on the Wall

_"Prepare these priests for death," - Bishop Nicholas Gallagher, Galveston diocese, to Father James Kirwin_

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/43680106811/in/photostream/)

Have we been able to ascertain the nature of the reality break within the house? The way that it connects up with -.

No. The portals theory is workable, yet we haven’t been able to find a logical reason for the inconsistency. There is some feeling that time travel might be involved or a kind of collapsing of time into one event horizon. A spiraling in of time.

That’s impossible.

I’m just telling you what the scientists are theorizing.

I don’t have a lot of respect for your scientists.

That’s because you aren’t one. You’re an inventor. An engineer. Not a theoretician.

Hmph. Practical people are needed to solve this problem. And this kind of speculation isn’t practical.

You used to be a dreamer.

That was before.  And we’re sure that this is Steve Rogers? Captain America? And … and Tony Stark?

The DNA we recovered says yes.

Who are the others? Humans?

No idea yet. We’re still working on it.

 

The island was long and thin and completely exposed to the waters of the Gulf. It was a barrier island, but so tempting to people who wanted a view of the waves. In 1825, Mexico was flush with the success of its revolution, free of the European yoke, and a port city on the island made a lot of sense. Like New Orleans, Galveston could be a portal to the entirety of the Americas and beyond. Of course, the Akokisa and Karankawa had been there for centuries, long before Cabeza de Vaca and La Salle. Before Jean Lafitte. And long before Bernardo de Gálvez, who would have left his name there himself had he ever set foot in the community.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/42963402194)

A long boom echoed through the entire structure and Natasha felt the floor shift under her boots, canting sideways with a savage abruptness. She flailed, reaching out for something solid to hold on to as the ground rolled under her feet. The sunlight beams vanished and a blue-gray darkness swept over the house. There was an instant stillness and then the house heaved again, with the sound of splintering wood and a crazed ringing of bells.

“Natasha!” Steve screamed and she turned awkwardly, her legs wrapped in her long, sodden skirts. Her eyes met his and he said, almost in a whisper, more motion than sound, “What is it?”

Then the next wave crashed over them and smashed the world into matchsticks. She felt her bones break as she was drawn down under the surface of the water and layered beneath the wood of the house. Impossibly, there was a hand in hers, pulling desperately at her, inhumanly strong. She couldn’t breath.

Natasha gasped, tears springing to her eyes, as the floor twisted under her foot, her ankle turning under. A sharp pain. Only a sprain, but it would slow her down. “Are you OK, Nat?” Steve asked, concerned.

She nodded. “I think it’s just a sprain.”

She ran over the sand, trying to reach St. Mary’s. The tide was rising higher and higher, the lip of the water already kissing the rough wooden edges of the dormitories. The nuns were there, too, their thick skirts dragging through the water. They had the rope, she squinted, ‘A clothesline?’ Her ankle turned under her in the wet sand and a sharp pain ran up her leg.

“I thought we weren’t going to climb these stairs?” Bruce objected. “You said it was too dangerous.” He looked up at her where she stood on the landing, his expression doubtful and still a little angry.

He was still looking at her, a sepia tableau, when the floor opened and she fell. The shock of the cold water masked the sharp pain of her feet hitting the rough concrete below the surface.

The nuns wrapped the rope around her, pulled the knots tighter, and then around Clint. His eyes were huge when he looked at her and she tried to smile. “It’ll be OK, Clint. This is just so we don’t get separated.”

A long boom echoed through the entire structure and Natasha felt the floor shift under her boots, canting sideways with a savage abruptness. She flailed, reaching out for something solid to hold on to as the ground rolled under her feet. “Not again,” she muttered. “What the hell is happening?”

“I think we found the portal,” Steve said grimly.

The floor jerked again and then gravity vanished and they were falling. There was a long, drawn out scream in the air above them and she felt the breeze of the monster’s futile grab as she fell out of his reach.

The familiar sensation of falling from a great height stopped his breath. Not falling from the portal; he was unconscious or maybe dead for that one. But falling in Afghanistan. Falling due to icing. Falling … just falling. The fall went on and on, like his eyes falling shut into darkness as he watched the Chitauri ship shatter into fragments of light against the stars. Like falling with a dark and empty hole in his chest as Obie couldn’t even bear to touch him again. Just falling. In the dark.

And then he was still and there was actually light, filtered by giant trees but blinding after all of the aggressive darkness he’d been dealing with. His head ached like a deep bruise or the aftermath of a spectacular headache. He was lying on his back, staring at the distant tree tops. Were those … pine trees? At the beach? With a groan, he rolled over. “Ow! Fucking …” He looked at his hand, blinking. There was a crust a reddish clay soil on the edge of his hand and the imprint of several pine needles in the palm. The air smelled strange. “Where the hell am I?” Silence.

He tapped his backup comm. “J, you there?”

“Sir, I am delighted to hear from you again. I am sending the suit to your location.”

“What is my location?”

“Precisely, you are at 31.047617° N, 94.314205° W. Colloquially, you are about 10 feet from the edge of what is known as the Blue Hole, an accidental lake in the Angelina National Forest in Northeastern Texas.”

“Accidental?” Tony said, heaving himself to his feet and looking around. “Was there a pipeline explosion or something?”

“It was a quarry for the building of the seawall for Galveston, where you were investigating SHIELD’s report of a portal. If I may quote: ‘It was a dynamite blast that turned the dusty rock quarry into a shimmering lake. In 1920 miners were blasting in an attempt to dislodge more sandstone when a geyser broke through and revealed an underground spring. As the story goes, the high-pressure natural spring shot water up into the air for days. Eventually, the waters filled the space created by the rock mine and The Blue Hole was born.’”

“Interesting. I guess. Shimmering, huh? Very poetic.”

“[Their words](http://www.wideopencountry.com/the-blue-hole-in-east-texas-the-accidental-lake-youve-never-heard-of), not mine, Sir.”

“Uh huh. What’s the ETA on the suit?”

“It should be intercepting you in 78 seconds.”

“Good. Where’s the team?”

“Unknown.”

“That’s not good.” Tony squinted up at the sky and then walked forward, cautiously peering over the edge into the deep blue water. He shivered and turned his back on it, facing the trees. That wasn’t much better. The trees were crowded together and the underbrush was thick.

Bruce sighed and leaned back against the wall in the dark. Of all of the things he feared, monsters in the darkness were not even a footnote on the list. The things he feared mostly involved close human contact

_“Atraído por el abismo, vivo la melancólica certeza de que no voy a caer nunca.” ― Juan José Arreola, Confabulario_

and that wasn’t an issue right now. He didn’t particularly want to lose the life he’d managed to build for himself with the Avengers during this brief time, but he was more than capable of starting over. He’d done it before. He would have more regrets than usual this time, but nothing he couldn’t handle. If that was the price he had to keep paying then that was the price.

Bruce knew, he knew it was stupid to start feeling comfortable there at the tower with Tony. Tony and the others. It was insane as in not a rational thing to do. And yet. He was growing more and more used to living there, staying in close and dangerous proximity to the others. It couldn’t possibly end well. He blew out a breath. Maybe it was past time that he moved on.

As he was considering continuing his long walk in the dark, the world slipped sideways, like a second hand ticking over on an analog clock. He was in the center of a wide white room, sitting in a white plastic chair, pulled up to a white table. It was completely silent and completely still, like being frozen in a photograph. He was dimly aware that he wasn’t even breathing, though the lack of oxygen didn’t bother him. Was his heart beating?

No.

He was in the cloud, hung between 1 and 0. Waiting for the 3D printer to come to life and iterate him out in spools of green plastic. He tried to close his hundred hands into fists, but nothing moved. Waiting. Just waiting. _For even while I live in darkness and silence, I can bring out colors in memory if I wish,_ he thought. _So help me. Please._

Then the second hand ticked again and he was in the dark. He blew out a shaky breath. In the distance, there was a scratching noise and then faint music bubbled up, distorted and tinny. He whispered, “I have roared with the groaning of my heart,” as he felt muscles tear, bones dislocate, self slip away. As always, after a certain point, it was so easy to fall that he always wondered if he would be able to pull himself open and climb back out through that terrible, toothy mouth.

He watched as Steve smiled across the table at Tony, his expression encouraging and open. A bolt of green rage ran through his blood, hot like a chemical marker before a scan.

_“I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.” ― Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers_

He watched as Tony flirted with Steve, drawing him closer and then pushing him away, rhythmically, with glances and sharply sweet words, an ebb and flow of an endless tide. As Tony glanced around to make sure they were along, never noticing Bruce, and then leaned in to whisper something to Steve. To Steve who blushed, colored pink, the color of his blood fighting through the surface of his skin. Not green. Not fierce. Not a monster.

Betty sighed. “How long are you going to punish yourself for?” She ran her fingers through his hair, twisting the short waves of brown gently. The short brown waves picked up sand and plastic detritus and cast it onto the shore, microbeads moving like tiny billiard balls as the crabs scuttled sideways on the hunt.

“For as long as it takes for me to put this right,” Bruce replied. “You know I have to do this.”

“You can have good things, Bruce,” she replied, tugging him closer.

The smooth skin of her cheek burned and flared against him, making pain bubble up through all of the places where he tore himself apart when he transformed. He held the pain close, a treasure sunk into the deepest part of the sea. “Betty, I will never deserve you.”

The monster stretched and growled within his bones, moss over winter trees, and said, “Kill Cap?” He sounded doubtful.

“No. No!” He shoved his chair back from the table and Tony looked over at him with an eyebrow raised and a knowing smirk.

“Are you alright, Bruce?” Steve asked, clearly puzzled but ready to spring into action. Of course. Of course. Fucking super soldiers.

“Yeah. I just need to …” he turned from the table, fleeing into the darkened hallway, the light from the kitchen a sunset fading behind him.

 

ABOVE TOP SECRET: Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project

Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, PhD

_In light of the fact that no one has yet been able to describe the Vita-Rays created by Abraham Erskine and Howard Stark in the original Project Rebirth super soldier experiment and any extant documentation of that project remains undiscovered, I have independently determined that gamma radiation may hold the key to activating the serum. I theorize that a combination of bio-engineering and gamma radiation can take the place of Erskine’s Vita-Rays. As for the super soldier serum, there is -_


	4. The Storm

_Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.”  ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick_

It started almost silently. The water pulled back from the shore, exposing the floor of the Gulf and all of the sinking, scuttling things that lived there. Waves boiling backward, curling up and showing particulate matter. Natasha stood on the pier and watched the shrimp boats bobbing and jerking, yanking on their ropes like hungry dogs.

As the wood pilings were exposed, silver and dark, the shadows drifted out into the Gulf, dying under the merciless glare of the sun. On the naked sand, curls of seaweed spelled out unmistakable words while the Portuguese Men-o-War shone purple translucent.

“Nat,” said Clint softly. “Why are you still here? We need to leave.” He took her hand. “We need to leave now, before it’s too late.”

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/43680084201/in/photostream/)

She tugged against his grip half-heartedly, her eyes still fixed on the distant water, the gray clouds that bent all the way down to the horizon. “I think it’s already too late,” she murmured. And then the entire world flashed white and grim and nothing was left.

“Natasha, are you OK?” Steve asked, nudging her shoulder with his own. She opened her eyes, wincing as phantom lights blinked on the perimeter of her vision.

“I’m fine,” she said heavily. “Just tired of walking in the dark.”

 

“There is literally nothing out here,” Clint complained over the comm. “Why are we wasting our time here again? Do you see a portal? Because I don’t see a fucking portal.” He gestured. “I just see a big, ugly house.”

“I seriously cannot believe I’m stuck out here with you when I could’ve been hanging out with Bruce,” Tony groused, his head aching. “Or even better, back in the workshop.”

“Does someone have a little crush?” needled Clint. “Are ya warm for his form?” He kicked a clod of dirt out of his way.

“Are you in high school?” Tony said distastefully, hovering near the roofline and scanning the horizon. “That’s a high school thing, right? Because I wouldn’t know. I didn’t go.”

Clint shrugged, “How would I know either? I dropped out and got my GED. So … Tony and Bruce, sittin’ in a tree -.”

“Oh my god, Clint,” Tony groaned. “Shut up. Go back to fucking with Cap. There’s nothing out here. I’m going to go inside.” He abruptly cut the power to the repulsors and landed on the dry lawn next to Clint. “I’m getting the others and we’re going to hit the beach.”

“Dude, it’s a Texas beach, not one of your private islands. No pretty white sand and crystal clear water here. It’s all oil and fishing nets. And the tide report on the way down said there was gonna be a lot of seaweed on the beach.” Clint flicked a mosquito off his bare arm. It left a spot of blood on his skin that he rubbed out with his forefinger.

“Whatever.” Tony looked up at the front of the house. “This mission sucks.”

“What did the mission brief say, anyway?”

“You didn’t read it?”

“I skimmed it. I was busy, and it was boring.”

“Well, yeah, it was boring. A SHIELD minion wrote it. There was hardly any data there and what was there was overshadowed by a basic inability to write informative prose. Basically we’re here because someone said there’s a portal here, and apparently we’re the experts on that now.” He rigidly suppressed the shake that wanted to run through him with that thought. “Weird things happening, people disappearing and reappearing, people thinking they’re seeing ghosts, spooky shit. And supposedly the house is bigger on the inside than on the outside.”

“Awesome!” cheered Clint. “It’s the TARDIS.”

Tony’s mouth quirked up in a reluctant half smile. “I wish. Come on, there’s nothing out here. Let’s see if we can find the Doctor.”

They walked into the house, pushing through the warped door, and treading as lightly as possible on the stained floorboards. As they passed from room to room on the ground floor, Clint noticed rough cut holes in the floor of each room. He knelt down and examined one of the holes. “These look like ax marks,” he said. “Were they looking for something? Drugs maybe?” He looked around the room. “But the holes are in different locations in each room. It’s not a methodical search.”

Tony walked over, the floor bowing slightly under the heavy boots of the armor. “Definitely ax marks.” He peered at a smear of mud between the hole and the wall. “Hm. A cat footprint.” He looked around.

Clint stood and wiped his palms on the sides of his thighs. “I feel like Sherlock Holmes. Guess that makes you Doctor Watson.”

Tony ignored him, sliding the end of one armored foot over an imperfect and buckled join between two boards. Outside, church bells rang deep and slow and then were abruptly silenced. No echo. He felt the short hairs on the back of his neck stand up, an atavistic warning signal. “Clint,” he said. “Be ready.”

“Always.” Clint shifted on the balls of his feet, his body taut with potential energy.

 

Steve frowned and leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Natasha let herself enjoy the view for a beat and then spoke, tired and ready to get back to a state of equilibrium, back to a semblance of home. “I’m fine. I don’t know why you’re all fussing over me,” she said grumpily, sitting on the edge of the bed with one foot propped up and the other leg dangling. “It’s just a bad sprain and some bruises.”

“Nat, you were … we almost lost you.” Clint sounds pained. “Steve said -.”

She cut him off. “I’m fine. Where’s Stark?”

“Where do you think?” Steve asked tiredly. “Holed up in his workshop. We won’t see him for days.”

“Unhealthy coping skills 101,” Clint said softly. “I’ll do my time on the range.”

Natasha looked at him curiously. “What did the two of you see? What happened to you?”

“Nothing.” Clint looked down at his hands resting on the edge of the bed.

“Try it again,” Natasha said. “This time, don’t lie.”

“Nat,” Steve protested quietly.

“Nothing. Just … probably the same shit the rest of you saw. We just kept replaying time and everything kept changing. I think … I think he saw me die once.”

“And you?”

Clint nodded. “Yeah. The arc reactor went dark and he collapsed and by the time I got there he was gone.” He shook his head. “It was fucked up, and even now I keep thinking I’m still there or I’m going to get sucked back in. Banner said it happened to him like that. He was out and then he was back in. He also said he won’t be sleeping anytime soon.”

“Clint,” Steve said softly, pushing off from the wall. “It’s over.”

“No, Cap, it really isn’t. We don’t know what’s real. We don’t know what’s really happening. We’re not in control.” Clint backed away, avoiding both of their gazes. “I’m going to the range. Targets. Letting the arrow fly. Pulling the trigger. That’s real.”

Natasha nodded. “It’s OK, Clint. Meet us for dinner at the tower tonight. We’ll drag Tony and Bruce out and have comfort food, yeah?”

 

_**From Dr. Benavides’ report to SHIELD upper level leadership** _

_It is entirely possible that the proposed Avengers team, as described in these pages, can become a close-knit group. They certainly worked as a unified team during the Incident earlier this year. However, I have serious reservations about their ability to work together successfully long term. In particular, it is a matter of some concern that the ostensible leader of the team is a man for whom the modern age is a series of surprises and who is still suffering from PTSD due to his service during World War II and the subsequent loss of all personal ties. To put it bluntly, Captain Rogers, while intelligent and adaptable, needs therapy and time to adjust to contemporary life, not the pressures of leadership in a doubtless confusing and complex world._

_Clint Barton, after being compromised prior to and during the New York Incident, is still suffering from the impact of being controlled by the alien Loki and from his role, however unwitting, in the fight on the helicarrier which resulted in several deaths, including that of his handler Phil Coulson. A sniper who cannot assure himself of his own locus of control will be unstable._

_Natasha Romanoff, though well-trained and more emotionally mature than her team mates, is now on a team with Dr. Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk. She has affirmed to her SHIELD-mandated therapist that she finds the Hulk frightening and viscerally shocking, to the point where her judgment may be compromised with regard to Dr. Banner._

_As for Thor Odinson and Drs. Banner and Stark, they are not SHIELD assets. Despite their personal heroism, it is recommended that non-SHIELD personnel not be a part of this putative team. I would recommend that non-SHIELD personnel be designated consultants and be called upon sparingly if at all. The chances of another alien invasion assisted by a portal created by a magic-wielding god must be vanishingly small, after all._

Steve smiled, ducking his head self-consciously, and then reached out to grasp Tony’s hand. “Stop that,” he chided playfully. He turned Tony’s hand palm up and leaned down to kiss it, nose wrinkling at the faint odor of oil. “You smell like a garage.”

Tony leaned into him. “So you’re saying … I’m a dirty boy?” he asked teasingly.

“You shred it, wheat.” Steve grinned, breaking into a laugh at the expression on Tony’s face. “Come here. I wanna kiss you.”

“I’m OK with that,” Tony murmured, straddling his thighs. “I am OK with that.”

 

“So, Dr. Banner –,” Natasha began.

“Bruce,” he corrected, looking around at the walls in the dim light of the boarded up room. He walked over to one wall and lightly touched it with his fingertips. “This is interesting.” He ran his fingers lightly over the lines scored in the discolored wallpaper. “I wonder what this symbol is. It doesn’t look like graffiti.”

_“My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.” ― Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers_

Thor stepped forward, shifting the handle of Mjölnir in his grip. “It is a vegvísir. A … a sign. To help those who are lost at sea return home.

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/28791250187/in/photostream/)

“That’s a bit on the nose,” said Bruce quietly, peering through his glasses at the lines

Thor looked at him and smiled. “Sometimes the lines of the universe match up. Come, Doctor, let us explore this place further.”

As they resumed their inspection of the interior of the house, Bruce said, “You wanted to ask me something.”

“Yes,” Natasha replied, regarding him steadily for a moment before turning back to the task of searching the remains of the mid-1980s cabinetry in the kitchen. “What’s going on with you and Stark? You’re getting tired of him already, aren’t you?”

“Why would I be tired of him? Do you know how long it’s been since I had a conversation with someone about anything that mattered to me?” Bruce asked with a raised eyebrow. He pulled a hand scanner from his pocket and activated it, crouching to run it along the partially rotted baseboards. “That’s fairly rare in the places I’ve been hiding out in. what with people struggling for basic survival and all.” As the beam swept over the damaged wood, small clouds of gnats jumped up and boiled in the air.

“It just seems like there’s some tension there,” Natasha replied, flicking yellowed shelf paper up and watching the tiny roaches run out.

Bruce laughed. “Tension.” He rolled his shoulders. “Tension. You’re joking. He’s the only one of you who isn’t scared of my other half.”

“He irritates you.”

“You all irritate me. I’m used to being on my own.” Bruce shrugged. “There’s no tension.”

“There is,” she replied. “You two aren’t the first people I’ve profiled.”

“I have trust that it is not that kind of tension, Lady Natasha,” said Thor with a broad smile. Behind him, Steve chuckled, shaking his head. “Aye, Steven takes my meaning.”

Bruce turned and looked at Natasha who was staring at him. “Do you really want to know, Natasha?”

“You’re fucking, aren’t you?” she returned, her hands on her hips and a frown on her face.

“Natasha!” Steve said reprovingly, his expression serious now. “Leave Bruce alone. That’s none of our business.”

“Sure it is, Steve. Team dynamics.” Natasha rocked back on her low heels, her expression closed off.

Steve held up a hand, palm out. “You know what, Nat? In the war, there were guys who found comfort in each other’s arms at night and it didn’t affect unit cohesion.” He shook his head. “They’re both adults and -.”

“That’s trained soldiers, not a wild card playboy and a …”

[Footnote: John Toland: “considering how dangerous it is made to tell the truth, ‘tis difficult to know when any man declares his real sentiments of things.” Toland, _Tetradymus_ (London, 1720), 95, as cited in Berman, _Atheism in Britain_ , 76)]

“Rage monster?” Bruce said dryly, rising from his crouch.

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” she replied in a dangerous tone.

“Don’t be disingenuous.” Bruce’s voice took on a slightly deeper tone and his head pulled slightly to one side. “We all know what you’re worried about.”

Thor said calmly, placing a hand on Bruce’s shoulder as he looked steadily at Natasha, “They may not be trained, but they are both soldiers and comrades. Stark laid down his life for his community and Banner risks his very self each time he fights with us. We cannot ask more than that. If they are happy, if they find comfort, what does it matter?”

Natasha leaned back against the counter’s edge. “What about Pepper?” Her expression was suddenly studiedly blank, giving away nothing except that there was something important behind the question.

Bruce blinked. “Pepper? Pepper isn’t … they broke it off, Natasha. They broke it off before anything started between Tony and me.”

“So, Tony Stark, heterosexual playboy, the man who has been circling Potts like a shark for years just … dumped her … for you?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Natasha.” Bruce took a few steps back, his posture still hunched from the stress of holding in his anger.

Steve interjected, “Well, obviously he’s not heterosexual. Maybe he’s bisexual. Or pansexual.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s irrelevant, anyway, and none of our business.”

Bruce said angrily, stepping further away from the encounter, “I can’t believe you want to stand here gossiping about Tony and me and Pepper. If Tony knew you were talking about Pepper at all, he would -.”

Natasha cut him off. “He would what? Why would he care? According to you, he left her.”

Bruce smiled bitterly, “I think it’s funny that you are questioning Tony’s ability to … to love when you obviously know nothing about love. Tony can love Pepper and care about me. I can love Betty and care about Tony. It’s not a zero sum game, in any way.” His heart turned over in his chest, and the monster inside him cautioned, listen, listen, be aware. Something was moving, something dangerous.

Steve put a cautioning hand on Natasha’s arm. “Agreed. I’m sorry, Bruce. This is a very intrusive conversation. I’m not sure how we ended up here. Let’s … let’s finish checking the house.”

 

“Um, I think there’s something behind us,” said Bruce quietly, carefully measuring his breaths.

Natasha looked at him. “You heard it?”

“I felt it,” he admitted after a beat. “My hair is standing up and I can feel the force lines quivering. There’s something here with us.”

_“For all the words ending in ble are in the creature. Invisi-ble, Incomprehensi-ble, ineffa-ble, A-ble.” – Christopher Smart_

She stared at him, hard, for a moment and then shrugged minutely. “OK. Is it dangerous?” She tilted her head.

“I would say so,” Bruce breathed. “Yes. It’s … I can feel its rage.” The ambient light in the room dimmed, as if clouds had passed between the sun and the earth where they stood. Steve shifted where he stood.

“What’s going to happen, Bruce?” she asked softly as more light leached from the air.

He shook himself. “We’re going to come to grief in the darkness.” He turned as everything went black.

 

**I honestly don’t think this is a portal. There’s something else going on here. If you look at the models we’ve managed to make, it can’t be a portal.**

_**Why are you so adamant? A portal is just a doorway … never mind. So you’ve discounted the idea of time travel?** _

**Not entirely.**

_**The latest models suggest that if we don’t do something about this, it won’t matter because nothing will survive. The entire multiverse will disappear.** _

**How can you possibly have accurate models when you have only incomplete observations? We don’t even know what we’re dealing with here. Speculation isn’t practical. I know we’re on a timeline here but -.**

_**Yeah. That’s not an ironic statement. All we can do is build the best models and extrapolate from there. Test. We don’t have time for anything else.** _

**Time. It seems to me the one thing we have plenty of is time. And not nearly enough.**

 

 

Once Tony had make a joke about Bruce’s ability to stay calm, made assumptions about Buddhism. Bruce had gently corrected him. “It’s called Perennial Wisdom.”

Tony froze, a sour expression on his face. He asked cautiously, “Bruce, are you a new ager?”

“I suppose I am, in a way. Think of it like extremely open-minded Unitarianism. I’ve traveled too much and seen the world through too many different people’s eyes to discount the idea that there’s some truth everywhere.”

“What? Just lying around waiting for us to pick it up?” Tony scoffed, shaking his head. “I’m actually a little disappointed in you. You’re a scientist.”

“I am.” Bruce smiled. “And as such I do think there’s truth lying around everywhere, waiting for us to pick up on it.”

“That is … you know I’m an atheist, right?”

“I know. And I know right now you’re thinking that I’m judging you. I’m not,” Bruce said gently. “Can you do the same for me?”

Tony sighed, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Bruce, religion and religious people have done a lot to fuck up the world.”

“So have scientists. You of all people know that.”

“You’re right. I just … I thought we were on the same page here.”

“I believe in tolerance.” Bruce knew his tone had an edge at this point, but he had seen too much to let this go. “I believe in wanting more than what we see here.”

“You know what,” replied Tony, “I do, too. And I believe in tolerance, too. But I also agree with Karl Popper about the paradox of tolerance. And I believe in scientific rationalism.”

They had left it at that, but Tony hadn’t been able to help remembering the conversation when he got his hands on what was left of the notes from Bruce’s super serum experiments.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/43680098581/in/photostream/)

Thor paused. “The funeral pyres. I did not know people in this land practiced this ritual.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asked, grimacing against the odor which was working its way like a viper through his sinuses and lungs.

“The pyre.” Thor gestured, a puzzled look upon his face. “See?’ He indicated the rough pile of mattresses and broken furniture, the remains of a piano listing in the heap, and upon it the body of a tall woman with long brown hair wearing a blue silk skirt. There was a rope tied around her waist. Thor said sadly, “Someone tried to save her, but she went under the waves.”

Steve woke with a start.

“Nat!” Clint called again as Tony peered up the spiral staircase and then made a circuit of the room. “Where are you?” He pulled his comm unit out of his ear and looked at it in frustration, one hand massaging his skull behind the ear. “Nothing is working, Stark. What the hell?”

“Hey, don’t blame me. Those are SHIELD issue.” Tony stretched out his right arm and the armor around his hand and forearm peeled back, folding impossibly backward. He plucked the unit from Clint’s hand with bare fingers and squinted at it, turning it slowly in order to catch all of the available light.

_LET PETER rejoice with the MOON FISH who keeps up the life in the waters by night._

_Let Andrew rejoice with the Whale, who is array'd in beauteous blue and is a combination of bulk and activity._

_Let James rejoice with the Skuttle-Fish, who foils his foe by the effusion of his ink._

_Let John rejoice with Nautilus who spreads his sail and plies his oar, and the Lord is his pilot._

_Let Philip rejoice with Boca, which is a fish that can speak._

_Let Bartholomew rejoice with the Eel, who is pure in proportion to where he is found and how he is used._

_Let Thomas rejoice with the Sword-Fish, whose aim is perpetual and strength insuperable._

 - _Jubilate Agno, Frag B2, Christopher Smart_

 

Clint asked, “Is your comm working, Mr. Futurist?”

Tony glared at him. “Rogers, Bruce, anybody?” The corners of his mouth went down and he tightened his lips. “J, can you raise the team?”

“I’m afraid not, Sir.”

“What’s going on?”

“Uncertain. As you know, there was no report of equipment failures in the briefing materials.”

“Can you buzz Fury?”

“I cannot.”

Tony stilled, then his fingers danced over the damaged comm unit again. He pried gently at one of the tiny panels with the end of a fingernail.

“What do you mean you can’t reach Fury? I thought you had a direct line in.” Clint was mostly irritated, although he was starting to get worried about their continued inability to reach anyone.

“J, try to reach Fury and the Capitty Cap again,” Tony said.

“Sir, I cannot even reach my primary servers or the satellite relays.”

“So I’m on JARVIS-lite right now?”

“However will you survive, Sir?”

“It’s OK, baby boy.” Tony smiled.

“I will be unable to call for help should you need assistance,” JARVIS replied. “And historical data suggests you will at some point need assistance.”

“And yet he still has room to be his unusual personality plus. Not nice, J. You’ve hurt my feelings.”

“This house is really weird,” Clint said, cutting into their conversation as he ran one hand over an unadorned wall and glanced around. “It looks … familiar.” He held out a palm and Tony dropped the unit into his hand gently. The interior of the house was stiflingly hot. Clint pushed his hair back from his sweaty face and sighed. “How can you stand being in the armor?” he asked. “Aren’t you burning up?”

“It has climate control, of course,” Tony said. He held out his right arm and twitched it the right and Clint watched as the armor panels ran like beetles over his hand and forearm, covering him in gold and red again.

“Of course,” Clint muttered, fanning himself with one hand. He looked around the room at all of the boarded up windows. He’d give anything for a cross-breeze. He walked over to one window and opened it, the sash weight rattling inside the jambs. Then with both hands braced, fingers out, he tested the plywood and felt it give a little bit. It moved. He shoved two, three times, and it came loose, swiveling down with a pained shriek to hang from one of its lower corners against the outside of the house. The cooler, salt-laden breeze on his face immediately improved his temper. He looked out across the sand at the place where the pale blue sky met blue gray water, listened to the waves for a moment.

“Hey, Tony?” Clint said hesitantly.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Tony replied absently.

“You went up to the roof, right? To see Natasha’s widow’s walk?” Tony nodded. “Since when does this house have an ocean view?”

Behind him, he could hear the heavy tread of the suit as Tony approached. “It doesn’t.”

“Is this the portal?”

Tony was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Scans say no. Nothing, JARVIS?”

“I am not detecting any anomalies in this area.”

“Where the hell did they go?” Clint asked urgently, aware that his pitch was rising. Tony lightly placed one hand on his shoulder. “I hate this fucking magical shit.”

“Me, too. But it can’t be magic, Einarr Þambarskelfir. It’s science, and it’s something we can figure out. We just need to find the source. Let’s check the other rooms.”

Clint gave a brief laugh. “A pep talk from Dr. Tony Stark. With bonus historical archer knowledge. Wow. Lucky me.”

“Lucky you. Let’s go.”

**Glossary**

Gamma radiation - gamma ray; penetrating electromagnetic radiation of a kind arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei

Guilt - the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime; a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a universal moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation

Hurricane - a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain

Monster - an imaginary creature that is typically large, ugly, and frightening

Past - gone by in time and no longer existing

Portal - a doorway, gate, or other entrance, especially a large and elaborate one


	5. The Feather, or Weighed and Found Wanting

_Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness.” ― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep_

In the center of the room, equidistant from the ruined fireplace and the one unbroken window, was a small white cardboard box. A shaft of sunlight played over the flyspecked lid. Clint shook his head, “OK, this is ridiculous.” After checking the area, he stepped forward and knelt in front of the box, reaching out to loosen the lid. As he lifted off the top, the friction of lip against base tore the damp cardboard between his fingers.

He set the lid aside. The box was full of old black and white photos. Crouching down on his haunches, he lifted out some of the photos and spread them on the dark wooden floor. He whistled. “It looks like a war zone.”

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/41880763070/in/photostream/)

“What does?” Tony called from the other room, the sound winding through the wet and dusty air.

“Nothing. Hey, was there some kind of major disaster here? Maybe about …” He squinted at the pictures. “Maybe 100 or 150 years ago?”

He felt the heavy tread of the armor behind him through the floorboards and turned his head to see Tony, faceplate still up, leaning against the warped pocket door frame. “Why am I the only one who ever does the reading? Do you all enjoy being unprepared?”

“It keeps missions from being boring,” Clint replied flippantly. “Just answer the question.”

“There was a hurricane. A big one. 1900. Destroyed most of the city. Why?”

Clint gestured at the photos before him. “What happened?”

“J, make me a close quarters local network, triple encrypted, and flip the videos from the briefing packet to Hawkeye’s phone,” Tony said and turned back to the other room. Clint slid his phone out of his pocket and opened [one file](https://youtu.be/ZX88xLJVfpI) and then [the other](https://youtu.be/AG5bNUH5sgM).

After viewing the videos, he rose and looked around for Tony. “Hey, Stark!” There was no response. He stood still and could feel only the faintest of vibrations under his feet. It seemed to come from one of the areas they hadn’t fully explored yet and he silently cursed Tony for risking himself by not waiting. “Stark! Wait up,” he called as he strode forward into the dimness.

The next room was filled with musty detritus, mold eating black circles on into the faded wallpaper. He frowned. Although the room was crowded with junk – old mattresses, plastic cups, newspapers, and the like – it was obvious that Iron Man wasn’t here. The only point of entrance into the room was the doorway he had used. He turned and retraced his steps… and found himself in a completely unfamiliar-looking space.

“So much for being able to see everything,” Clint muttered, furious with himself. On every side, hallways jutted out like an illusion from a mirrored funhouse, unfolding until he was completely lost. “This is ridiculous.” If he stopped to think about it, he couldn’t even swear that he could tell which way was up. Gravity seemed to pull in every direction here.

 

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/43633239632/in/photostream/)

She took the long sticks that her brother had stripped off the jasmine bush and braided them together, the green wetness inside welling out as she twisted and broke the fibers. Behind her, the bushes filled up with tiny birds again, dots of sparrow gray shrouded in the thick green and down low, where the branches were hard and brown and brittle and killed the grass. A good place to hide, if you didn’t mind the dirt and the scratches. A little bit of blood.

Last time Daddy cut back the carolina jasmine, they found an old weathervane with no north, a busted concrete birdbath, a whole pile of glass marbles, and a bronze face like a mask, with empty cut out eyes. Dad threw most of it under the house, called it worthless. But she knew that if you crawled under the house and looked behind one of the piers, you could look through the eyes of that face and see another world.

The marbles got to stay in a bowl on the table just inside the front door.

 

Natasha sat down on the couch and set her teacup on the low table. Bruce watched her cautiously as she gave him a small smile and nodded. He set down the tablet he’d been reading from and gestured to her to speak. She took a deep breath and said, “I won’t insult your intelligence by mincing words.”

Bruce grimaced. “You’re already insulting my intelligence by condescending to me like that.”

“Bruce, he is such an asshole. Probably because he’s so insecure, but still … what are you thinking? I can tell you’re a nice person. Thoughtful. Compassionate.” She delicately touched the rim of her teacup with the end of her forefinger, scooting it slightly further away from the edge of the table.

Bruce flashed her a nasty grin with too many teeth. “Don’t start, Natasha. You don’t know either one of us well enough to make blanket statements like that. And you probably never will. You’re so busy being a profiler and a spy that you can’t see what’s right in front of you … just forget it.”

She threw him a look, a brief flicker at his face and then away and to the side. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come on. Now your feelings are hurt? I know you were able to play Tony for a while, until he and Pepper figured out your game and doubled back on you. You won’t play me. I know what you are.”

“What am I?” She looked at him again and smiled a little.

“A user. Someone who thinks the worst of everyone and uses that to justify treating us like pawns in a game. You are incapable of being loyal to anything real. The perfect SHIELD agent.”

She winced and twitched her head back just a shade, as if attempting to cover up that his shot had gone home. “That’s not fair.”

“I think it is.” He studied her for a moment. “Anyway, he’s not as insecure as you think he is and, when it comes down to it, I’m an asshole, too. And you know all about my anger issues. Even if I were a ‘nice person,’ this is none of your business. Or SHIELD’s business.”

She picked up her cup deliberately and took a sip, the scent of jasmine soothing the air. Bruce waited. When she put the cup back down with a tiny sound on the highly polished table, she looked at him and said, “So did you two come to an agreement when we were at the house in Galveston? Did you bond over your mutual distrust of authority or your shared daddy issues? Or was it during one of the alternate realities and neither one of you knows what really brought you together?” She paused. “Let me guess. You’re science buddies with benefits until something better comes along … for him. Poor Bruce.”

Bruce laughed, letting some meanness seep through. “I think it was when I fucked him in the shower before we sat down and had a nice spaghetti dinner with the whole team.” He got up. “Or maybe when he got down on his knees and blew me in the workshop while the rest of you were in here watching a movie and being wholesome for the sake of Steve Rogers. It’s not all science and being sad about our ugly childhoods, Natasha.” He reached down for his tablet, turning it over thoughtfully in his hands. “You think we’re these simple people, easy to manipulate, easy to understand. You have so much contempt for the rest of us. If our little adventure in Texas should’ve taught you anything, you should’ve learned that everyone is complicated and we never really know why we do anything.” He turned and walked out of the room, tablet in hand, while she stared at the steam coming from her teacup.

“You can come in now, Clint,” she said, not deigning to raise her voice.

“I had no idea that mad scientist number two had such a mouth on him. Did he learn that from Stark?”

She shrugged. “Apparently he’s complicated, and he doesn’t know why he does what he does.”

Clint dropped onto the couch and put his feet up carelessly on the table, barely missing her teacup. “Well then he can join the club.”

 

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/43680092871)

 

“You knew! You knew what could happen and you did nothing!” Steve raged. “You knew. You’re the futurist, you’re supposed to know what would come next.”

“I’m sorry … I can’t … even I can’t predict everything.”

“Then what good are you? Isn't that your job ... and you couldn't even do that?” Steve buried his face in his arms, sliding forward onto his knees on the altar rail. “They’re all gone. Everyone I ever knew is dead and I’m left behind.”

 Tony stood awkwardly behind him, his arms loose at his sides. “I’m sorry, Steve. I’m not perfect; I make mistakes.” He paused. "I let people convince me I was wrong, that I shouldn't say anything."

His voice heavy with weariness and muffled by his forearms, Steve replied, “Just leave, Tony. You’re not the one I want to talk to right now. Get out of the church. You don't belong here."

 

_“Even though white is often associated with things, that are pleasant and pure, there is a peculiar emptiness about the color white. It is the emptiness of the white that is more disturbing, than even the bloodiness of red.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale_

The thing was, caught in the haze of a dream memory, Tony knew this wasn’t real. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Sunset smiled across the room at him, her mouth full of cruel teeth, as Ty ran a hand down his bare chest, his nails pulling faint lines of pain over his skin. “Ty,” he muttered, giving three long blinks to try to bring the room into focus. “Ty, what’s going on?”

“We’re at Sunset’s place,” Ty said, low and intimate. “Playing truth or dare. And she dared me to get you off.”

He rolled his head over to concentrate on Ty’s blurred face. “Don’t I get a say, Caesar?”

“Relax, Mark Antony,” Ty replied. “Life is but a dream. Experience is subjective. Your senses lie.” His hand slid lower and Tony let his head fall back against the couch. Let his eyes drift shut. Thought, _I wanna talk to her. She’s hot as hell._

When he woke up, for the longest time he couldn’t decide if he was staring into an unrelenting light or if he was blind. His eyes burned with a whiteness that was like a flame, whether he opened them or closed them. It was impossible to look away from the light. From everything he could feel and smell, he was underground. This was the worst of his nightmares, really, alone in a cave, marching into what seemed like direct sunlight, so bright that even with closed eyelids he could only see white. And it was wet. Very wet. Salt water full of particulate matter.

The collision with the ceiling set his head spinning and then somehow he was on his back on the floor, repulsors sparking dangerously, stuttering his limp body along the slick concrete. Suddenly, the light that was splitting his brain open was bisected by a dark gray bar that moved strangely in two dimensional space. He reached up, hey! 3D, just as a bitter white cloud engulfed him. “Damnit, DUM-E!” he yelled, his mouth full of foam.

Tony kept slogging through the water, refusing to give in to his incipient panic. The water barely came up to his mid-calves. Nothing to worry about. Instead, he kept up a running conversation with himself. “Mi estas Viro de Fero. Mi venis por savi vin. Ĉu vi povas helpi min? Damnu ĝin! Estas malseka en ĉi tie. Mi malamas ĉi tiel.” He sighed and pushed his fringe back from his forehead. “Lo odio tanto. Ummm ... Я так ненавижу это. Odio tanto est.”He grunted. “I don’t think she actually speaks Latin.”

He groaned as he rolled over in the bed, dislodging Ty’s arm. The room was hot, Ty was burning up, and there were too many covers. His skin was slick with drug film. He slid off the bed backwards and went to his knees with a painful thump on the carpet. Ty propped his head up on one fist and smiled at him. Tony leaned forward to rest his forehead against the edge of the mattress and he felt Ty drop heavy fingers into his hair, teasing the strands apart. He shivered.

In the darkness and the unrelenting heat, it would’ve been tough to keep his hands steady. With the added strain of the constant, brutal agony that radiated from his chest up into both arms and down to his hands and the difficulty of drawing a decent breath, it was impossible to keep his fingers from trembling. Patiently, he grasped the delicate wires again and tried to braid them together. There was a deep sound somewhere in the extended complex of caves and tunnels and he flinched, losing the wires again. Yinsen leaned over his shoulder and laid his fingers over Tony’s. “Rest for a moment,” he said quietly. “We have time.” A bead of sweat ran down the back of his neck, under his shirt.

It was silent on the other side of the portal, which somehow made it more frightening. It was so easy to give up. It didn’t work. There was always more to do.

The water licked against his legs and he stopped, huddled against the wall, pressing his face into the mud in an attempt to escape the light. “JARVIS,” he whispered. “JARVIS, I need you.”

“What is it?” Tony asked, running his hands over the smooth lines of the machine.

Ty straightened with a smile. “Dreamvision. Wanna try it? I can make it good for you. I can make it anything you want it to be.”

Tony pushed his face deeper into the blinding light, the coolness of the mud at odds with the burning brightness. He could taste the mud in his mouth, particles of glass sharp between his teeth, water pooling under his tongue. He choked, shaking as the wires that swung from his chest touched the water.

“Yeah, but Pepper,” Tony said, shifting from one foot to the other and staring at the canvas, “what the fuck is it?”

“It’s a masterpiece; that’s what,” she replied, a smile curving her lips as she looked lovingly at the painting.

“But what is it a picture of?”

“It’s a picture of what it is. It’s not meant to be representational,” she replied. “That’s what photography is for.” She sighed. “It’s as if you never even looked at that art history website…”

Tony muttered. “Well, it’s ugly. I don’t want to see it again. It’s literally hurting me with its ugliness. I want it out of my presence forever.”

She smiled smugly, “Then I’ll have it hung in your office. Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

He nodded and she turned to go, leaving him gazing at the painting with loathing.

He said, “If this universe is a simulation … I want out.” There was a heaviness in his chest, an exhaustion that spread over him like a thick and weighted blanket. “I want out of this one and into the prime mover’s universe.”

JARVIS asked, “Does that mean you want to level up?”

Fury scowled at him as he ran his fingers over the edges. Misdirection. This entire conversation, monologue really, was a dodge, a distraction. Nothing real. Except for the puzzled disapproval on Captain America’s face and the disdain on Romanoff’s. He put on a false smile.

 

_“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” ― John Milton, Paradise Lost_

“We cannot be as far down as it feels,” Natasha said, almost angrily. “We’re on an island. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not to mention that this house is on piers,” replied Steve.  “We must’ve gone through the portal that SHIELD identified.” He sighed. Ever since waking up in the future, he had been confronted with a world that made very little sense. This was just the latest version of that. It was all very well for historians to say that people didn’t change much over time. Maybe they didn’t, but the world itself sure had changed.

The darkness was absolute, the sense of being utterly alone pressed tightly against him, even though they were in physical contact with each other. Every step induced terrible vertigo as Natasha slowly guided them forward through the enormous space, wary of any possible breaks in the rough floor beneath them. They were surrounded by the smell of damp earth, so much so that Steve kept reaching up, expecting to find a ceiling of dirt right above their heads. But there was only open air. They inched forward carefully. Then the screaming began.

 

At first it was distant, echoing through what sounded like a maze of tunnels. Even at a distance, it crawled up her backbone and sat at the base of her brain, trying to push her into panic. Natasha knew that when the others heard the name “red room” they thought of some 60’s sci fi space, red instead of white, but all polished plastic and empty spaces with maybe a retro light fixture or two. Slinky spies bond girling around while men in pointy boots and tight pants made quips. But the real Red Room wasn’t a place like that. It wasn’t really even a place. Unless it was a place inside all of their heads. All of those little girls. The red room was what pain and fear and deprivation and depersonalization did to your mind. The red room was constant terror digging into the back of your skull, propelling you forward until you destroyed yourself. The others didn’t get it. They couldn’t. Even the ones who had been remade. Because they had never been burned to ash and blown away and had to start over completely.

Then, abruptly, there was a change in the quality of the sound. It grew shockingly loud and echoed everywhere around them in the large gallery in which they stood.

“Where is it?” Natasha muttered roughly, jerking her head around to try to hear more clearly. She yanked on Steve’s sleeve. “Come on. We need to move faster.”

“What if we fall?” Steve gritted out. “I can’t -.”

“Then we fall. Come on!” She yanked his arm again and he followed, matching her pace. She could hear Thor’s heavier footsteps behind.

It felt as though they ran for hours, their feet throwing up spray from the water seeping up through the floor. Natasha kept one arm fully extended in front of her, steeling herself for impact or for the floor to vanish. Instead, the floor abruptly tilted upward, forcing her to slow her pace. Twelve steps in, she suddenly flinched as her outstretched fingers touched a wet surface running perpendicular to the floor. “Stop! I found the wall,” she whispered harshly. “Everyone get your hands on the wall, but stay in contact.” Behind them, the monster shuffled and screamed, its tread heavy enough to dislodge clods of dirt from the far-away ceiling. A beat of silence, and then it screamed again, thrumming through her body until her bones vibrated. For a moment, Natasha was sure she would shake apart.

“Everyone flat against the wall,” Natasha commanded. “We have to stay together.” They plastered themselves against the wall, Thor in the center.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Steve chanted almost silently, his back against the wall and his legs trembling as the ice took him. “Oh my God.” Thor reached around his shoulders and drew him close.  Steve turned his head and buried his face against Thor’s shoulder, blindly seeking warmth and life. “I hate the future, Thor. I really hate it,” he whispered. He took a deep breath, finding comfort in the familiar scent of leather and sweat. “Oh God. Why can’t I go back?”

“There are monsters in every era, Steven,” Thor replied, shifting to wrap his arm around him more tightly.

Steve gave a harsh chuckle, “Is that supposed to comfort me?” He let the back of his head rest against the wall behind him.

“No.” Thor shrugged carefully in order to avoid shaking Steve. “If it helps you to call upon your gods, to pray, then you should do so. Sometimes the ritual is the most important thing.”

Steve pulled back, partially disentangled himself, and leaned, exhausted, his head still against the wall, his shoulder tightly pressed to Thor’s. “Only one God, at least when I went into the water.”

“And now that you’re reborn in a new era?”

“I honestly don’t know.” He blinked, salt water clinging to his lashes and stinging his eyes. “Maybe I’m in purgatory. Maybe all of this was a dream before I died.”

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/43633220082/in/album-72157696352426662/)

 

“Tony?” Bruce said tentatively into his comm. “Can you hear me? JARVIS?”

“Br- …. tart … y….” Static washed away the garbled transmission like waves smoothing out the sand.

“If you can hear me, I think we went through the portal. It was in the kitchen. I got separated from the others. I’m in a … I guess a cave, now?” Bruce paused and rubbed his hand over his forehead. “It’s dark here. And wet. And hot.” He blinked, trying in vain to see anything. “I’m not sure how I’m going to get out, Tony. You and Barton need to be careful.”

The uncertainty of the cavern floor beneath his feet, the way the sand shifted and sucked at his feet when he walked, had him on edge, right at his tipping point. The warm water lapped against his calves, his sodden trouser legs wrapped around him like nets, clinging and pulling him down. He paused, put a trembling hand to the wall next to him. His fingers dug small grooves in the mud as he flexed his hand. “Tony?”

“Br- … tart … y … ane.” Then there was nothing but white noise.

“I’m a little worried, Tony. I think it might be easy for me to lose myself down here.” Bruce wiped away the sweat that had already leached onto his brow. He pushed his hair back off his forehead with a sigh. “Damnit.”

In the back of his mind, the monster roused. “Banner lost?” came the inquiry.

“Yes … kind of,” Bruce said quietly.

The thought he got in return was scornful. “No kind of lost. Lost or not lost.”

“I know, Yoda. But we’re never really lost, are we? Because we don’t belong anywhere.” Bruce edged forward, one arm outstretched and his fingers flexed.

There was a hole, a gap, in the static and he heard, “Bru- … tart … y … ane. Gr… ome.”


	6. The Clock in the Walls

_“In the deepest places, where physical norms collapse under the crushing water, bodies still fall softly through the dark, days after their vessels have capsized. They decay on their long journey down. Nothing will hit the black sand at the bottom of the world but algae-covered bones.” ― China Miéville, The Scar_

The big cats smell like death, blood, musk and the metal bars of their cages.  It’s weird to have that scent lapping against him, warm Gulf waves, the water dirty with sand and knots of seaweed, Portuguese men-o-war sprawled over the stained dunes. Clint shakes his head, tries to clear his vision. Wait. Shakes? When was this happening?

The big cats smelled like death, blood, musk.  It was weird to have that scent lapping against him, warm Gulf waves, the water dirty with sand and knots of seaweed, Portuguese men-o-war sprawled over the stained dunes. Clint shook his head, tried to clear his vision. He’s been here before. Carefully skirting the fragments of net that are partially buried in the sand. No. That wasn’t right either.

The big cats will smell like death, blood, musk and it will stop him in his tracks when he runs and trips over the ropes.  The net will grip him, that scent lapping against him, warm Gulf waves, the water dirty with sand and knots of seaweed, Portuguese men-o-war sprawled dead corpses bubbling over the stained dunes. Wait.

Discarded and broken plastic pieces supplanting the shells and tiny crabs that wanted to scuttle away. On the horizon, the shrimp boats wore their nets like wedding veils, shedding microplastic confetti into the warm water.

Clint held up his hand and looked at the fine scars on his fingertips. “I need to get out of this house,” he muttered. “It’s messing with my head.”

_“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.” ― Werner Herzog_

 

 

“What the fuck was that?” Tony muttered to himself as he jerked away from the tendrils of touch he felt against the side of his face, up his arms. The sensations caught at him again, this time a little more firmly. He slapped at it, feeling the first stirring of animal panic winding its way along his nerves. “Shit!” He flinched away again. “Don’t fucking touch me!” His voice echoed in the dark and he stumbled against the curved and crumbling mud of the tunnel wall. He could feel worms turning in the dirt under his palm, braiding themselves into his fingers. He snatched his hand back, tucking it against his heaving chest, the pressure preventing him from fully inflating his already compromised lungs.

“It’s just anxiety,” he murmured angrily. “Just anxiety. It’s nothing, just your stupid gigantic brain fucking with itself again.”

Rational thought was quickly becoming ungraspable, but he knew one thing without any doubt. This was not his Science Bro. This was not the Hulk that caught him when he was discarded by the sky, plummeting from a distant part of the galaxy to the solid concrete of Earth. This was not the Other Guy. This was Obie reaching into his chest. This was the perfectionism that had paced him like a hunter throughout MIT, well-hidden but strong enough to strangle sleep. This was Howard on a drunken tear through cold and empty rooms and then the Ten Rings in the desert and finally every monster on the other side of the hole in the sky, hanging in the vacuum.

 

 “Can I ask you something?” Steve braced her foot with one hand cupped around her heel while expertly wrapping her ankle in strips from her torn jacket with the other. Natasha grimaced in the dark and braced her back against the wall and one hand on his shoulder and the other set against the floor.

“Is it mission-related?”

“Sort of?” When she didn’t respond, he ploughed on. “What was that conversation with Bruce about his personal life all about? Him and Tony?” He tucked the trailing end of the make-shift bandage in and then ran warm hands carefully over her foot and ankle, checking to make sure it would stay wrapped.

She laughed shortly, letting her head rest against the wall behind her. “That was weird, right?” Her voice was husky.

“A little.” She could tell from the movement that he was nodding his head.

“Yeah, I don’t … I honestly don’t know. I mean, I said all of that and, to some extent, I did mean it. But I don’t know why I said it. Usually I wouldn’t bother.”

“Why did you mean it?”

“Do you think Stark and Banner are a safe combination?” she asked.

“Well, no. But it’s not my job to manage their personal lives. They’re adults.”  Steve ran a hot hand over the makeshift bandage, testing it.

“The combination of those two unstable personalities could be very bad for the team, for our missions. In SHIELD, we’re supposed to keep that stuff separate.”

“So you and Clint never …?”

“No.” She tipped her chin down, her hair falling along the sides of her face.

“Natasha, you aren’t jealous, are you?”

“Maybe. Not of either one of them, neither one is my type. But … I have never had the time or the opportunity for a relationship. And, I grew to respect Potts when I was undercover at SI. I wouldn’t like to see her hurt.”

Steve shrugged. “I keep all of that stuff in a mental folder marked ‘none of my business.’” He rose and gave her a hand up. “I know everyone thinks I have all kinds of issues about sexuality, but the honest truth is that I don’t care what other people do when it comes to that.”

“What about you?” she asked curiously. “Are you looking for someone?”

He looked at her for a silent moment before reluctantly answering, “I don’t know. I feel like … for me … it’s too soon. Or maybe too late.”

“It might help you to connect better to this time,” she suggested.

“It might.” He squeezed her heel gently, conscious of his strength.

 

 

**Transcript**

Mrs. Rivers: My grandmother lived through the hurricane. She used to talk about it.

Interviewer: A lot?

Mrs. Rivers: No, not a lot. She … it was hard for her, you see. She lost most all her friends and family members in the storm. And of course life here was never the same afterwards. You can rebuild houses, but you can’t rebuild lives.

Interviewer: Did she ever describe it to you? She stayed on the island during the storm; is that correct?

Mrs. Rivers: She did. I don’t know why, except that back then they didn’t have all of this technology, weather reports. It was a different time. They didn’t realize how bad it would be. They were surprised. And then afterwards … you know what she asked me one time? Years after the storm?

Interviewer: What did she ask you?

Mrs. Rivers: It was soon after I lost my first pregnancy. I was staying with her and I had been crying and she looked at me she said, how long does grief go on for?

Interviewer: What did you say?

Mrs. Rivers: I said I guessed it went on for as long as you felt the loss. I always wondered why she asked me.

 

**Transcript**

Mr. Isaacs: Then afterwards … you know, they made the … the …

Interviewer: The African American men? I think that’s what I read.

Mr. Isaacs: Yeah. They made them pick up all of the bodies. But I went down to watch and I wished I hadn’t. Everything was dead and rotten. The smell was … I don’t know how they were able to do it. People were drowned. People were in pieces. The heat.

Interviewer: What else did you see?

Mr. Isaacs: I saw such sights, by sea and by land. But I couldn’t even say what was sand and what was sea. The smell and the destruction. I just … I was useless.

Interviewer: You were just a boy.

Mr. Isaacs: I remember thinking how I would never trust the Gulf again. I wish you could see how it chafed, how it raged, how it took up the shore! but that's not the point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! sometimes to see 'em, and not to see 'em; now the ship boring the moon with her main-mast, and anon swallowed with yest and froth …

Interviewer: Mr. Isaacs? Do you need to stop?

Mr. Isaacs: There was a man, on the shore. The waves had torn tore out his shoulder-bone; he cried to me for help and said his name was Nicholas.

Interviewer: Did he die?

Mr. Isaacs: I turned away to get help. I remember … when I turned in the sand, the smoke got in my lungs and I was dizzy. And I could see the whole of the shore, like I had come out of the sea, and there were so many bodies. And then the poor souls roared, and the  sea mocked them; and how the poor gentleman roared and the waves mocked him, both roaring louder than the sea or weather.

Interviewer: What happened?

Mr. Isaacs:  I have not winked since I saw these sights: the men and women were not yet cold under water. I can never forget it. It changed me. Changed who I am. It took away the life I was supposed to have.

 

 

“Where the fuck are you, Clint?” Tony called, sweeping the room with every sensor he had before walking forward into the hallway, continually scanning as he moved. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, motherfucker.” There was no response.

Tony muttered, “J, can you pull up the report that Fury sent last night? I need to check something.” He glanced over the documents as they moved across the HUD. He was tangentially aware of his outside environment, the dust motes hanging in the dim air of the hallway, but confident that if there was a danger present his scanners would have caught it. No sign of a portal or any other anomaly. No perturbation of the electronic or magnetic fields in or near the house. No weird chemicals. Nothing.

He stepped forward and, as he did, he caught the edge of his boot on something hard and heavy on the floor. It threw him off balance and he shifted to the right, toward the wall. As his elbow hit the wall, he felt a wave of nausea and an instant and blinding migraine. “What the hell?” He hurriedly pushed off the wall, swallowing down the urge to hurl, and hit the area with every scan he could generate. Nothing.

The nausea and the headache abated a little, but he avoided touching the wall, confining himself to studying the visual through his helmet and the negative test results. Studying all of the inconclusive data the HUD presented him with, he took a deep breath and reached out with one hand to brush his armored fingertips against the wall.

The darkness when it came was absolute, like the house had been abruptly dropped into the depths of the ocean. The HUD flickered out, leaving Tony trapped within the dead and claustrophobic space of his helmet. He looked down instinctively and the light from the repulsors at his palms and the glow of the arc reactor were gone as well. The suit still had power, he could still feel the slight vibration of the armor around him, and, aside from the terrified turning over of his heart at the sight of that blackness where the blue of the arc reactor should be, he felt no change. The darkness seemed to wait in anticipation for him to strip off the suit, open his helmet, grasp at his chest in panic. So he didn’t. He forced his hands to remain at his sides as he breathed through the fear. His pulse pounded, ratcheting the headache back up to almost unmanageable levels. He willed himself to ignore it.

The disappointment he felt around him in the air, as thick and stifling as the disappointment he’d grown up with in a house as haunted as this one, choked him. He didn’t lift the faceplate. He couldn’t. Despite that, the air he breathed was heavy with salt. “J,” Tony said quietly. There was no answer. Just dead air. “What the hell is this?”

In the distance, there was a loud bang and the shriek of metal against metal. A gurgling roar. Harsh breathing. Silence. In the distance. Maybe. Well, it was really impossible to know, wasn’t it? The monster could be right here, right next to him, reaching out to touch him. Tony shivered. “So here’s the thing with gamma radiation,” Tony started, his voice quivering slightly in the absolute darkness. “J, I know you can’t talk right now, but you’re listening, right? I’m not alone in here. So here’s the thing. Gamma rays ionize other atoms so they’re dangerous to living beings. I always wondered -.” There was another enraged and distant scream. Tony shuddered. “I always wondered how the doc did it. I mean, he shouldn’t be able to survive and yet he does. It’s an anomaly.” From deep within the darkness, there was the sound of metal flexing and folding. A long hiss. “And the whole Asgard thing. The hammer. Loki.” The darkness around him began to thrum with a rhythmic sound like an engine starting, running cold until it could warm up. “So … it’s made me think about science in a different way. I mean, I am a scientist but … I’m really more of an engineer. Practical. And some of the things I’ve seen … well, I canna change the laws of physics but apparently some people can.”

He took a cautious step in the darkness. Then another. Each step made him feel as if he was doing a 180 degree flip, marching in an endless tight circle. “Magic. Portals. Other dimensions. We broke open a lock somehow and all of the rules are changing. I can either be a stickler about it … honestly, that’s more Cap’s job. Or I can be open minded and wait for the experimental data.” He abruptly stopped as the armor ran into a solid surface.

 

_"I feel that I have been given a marvelous blessing, to have been brought so close to the infinite and to see how small finite things are." – Daisy Thorne, survivor of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900_

It turns out that the man who could’ve warned everyone and maybe saved a lot of lives was the person who spoke out the most vociferously about the lack of any real danger, Isaac Cline. He’s the one who laughed at the notion that the island needed more of a defense against storms.

 “By 8 p.m. a number of houses had drifted up and lodged to the east and southeast of my residence, and these with the force of the waves acted as a battering ram against which it was impossible for any building to stand for any length of time, and at 8:30 p.m. my residence went down with about fifty persons who had sought it for safety, and all but eighteen were hurled into eternity. Among the lost was my wife, who never rose above the water after the wreck of the building. I was nearly drowned and became unconscious, but recovered through being crushed by timbers and found myself clinging to my youngest child, who had gone down with myself and wife.” - Isaac Cline, [excerpt](http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/icline2.htm) from _Special Report on The Galveston Hurricane of September 8, 1900_ published in _Monthly Weather Review_ for September 1900.

 

 

A brother reaching through the flood to try to save him. Out the window of foster home number four in the darkest part of the night, rainwater lying on the grass. The air itself was heavy with water, and Clint’s cheek was still stinging from the blow two hours earlier.

“Come on, Clint!” Barney mouthed, and Clint could barely read his lips in the dimness.

“Why is everything so fucking complicated all the time?” Clint muttered, wading through at least a foot of still, cold water.  “We can never just go on a mission, kill someone, and go home. Even on the easy ones we have to stand around talking about it.” He stopped as something wrapped itself around one of his ankles and gingerly kicked himself free. Then he continued walking. “Just put me in a sniper’s nest, give me a target, and it’s the simplest, smallest thing in the world. Target, aim, shoot, kill.” In the distance, he suddenly caught the sound of water slapping against a surface. He stopped, cocked his head and listened in order to orient himself.

And then the static hit, an overwhelming white noise through his hearing aids that overwhelmed all of the exterior noise. “Damn it,” he swore, slipping them out of his ears. “Damn it.”

 

 

The nuns were singing as they were dragged under, salt stealing the words from between their lips. Each body turning over in the waves, like so many dark and supple fish sporting in the waves. The nuns were singing:

_Queen of the Waves, Laime, beginning and end,_

_Look forth across the ocean for me_

_From north to south, from east to stormy west,_

_See how the waters with tumultuous motion_

_Rise up and foam without a pause or rest._

_But fear we not, tho' storm clouds round us gather,_

_Izanami in perpetual night, beautiful dark,_

_Thou art our Mother_

_Goddess of the sea and of the tempest wild._

_Sweet Queen, rake or broom, it doesn’t matter_

_Here to sweep us into your arms_

_Into Hel’s power, your love_

_Help, then sweet Queen, in our exceeding danger,_

_By thy seven griefs, in pity Lady save;_

_My Queen, Mictecacihuatl, her lovely mouth open_

_The waves pass through_

_She rises and swallows the stars_

_Mother of God, our Lady of the Wave._

_Never our faith in thy sweet power can falter,_

_Beginning and end._

 

“Tie yourself to me, Nat!” Clint called over the noise of the storm.  He tried to pass her the rope with numb, slick, cracked fingers, but the wind whipped it away again and again. “Take the rope!” Next to him, a wave lifted its hard hand and plucked away another row of children, shoved them under the surface and ground them down into the sand. A deep bass note shook over the island and houses folded up and went down.

Natasha shrank back, recalling nightmares of rising water in the dark with her wrist handcuffed to a metal frame. “No! We’ll drown!”

“We’re better together!”

“You’ll pull me down.”

“You’re already going down. I’m giving you a lifeline here.” His gun on the floor and his hand outstretched. Blood. Red. Natasha shook her head. “Нет. Я не могу.” “You can!” Clint reached for her again. “I can help you. It doesn’t have to be like this.” She looked back with the wildest eyes he’d ever seen, a feral creature ready to kill him in order to be free.

 

 

Steve looked upward into the grayness, his head swimming. The doubled stairway coiled above them, impossibly steep as it unwound into the darkness, shedding genetic abnormalities as it spiraled. The pit was above them, instead of below, and he felt his pulse throbbing in his temple at the thought of willingly entering that darkness. With a deep breath, he grasped the railing and put his foot on the first step. Behind him, he could hear Natasha’s cautious steps and Thor’s steady tread.

They climbed. As they climbed, the winding double helix seemed to  unwind around them and carry them faster and then slower though the shadows, centrifugal forces dragging at them and peeling their fingers from around the railing. They climbed until even Steve was tired, until he was so wound up with wanting to escape that he could feel himself crawling out of his skin.  Steve looked down at his hand. It was trembling. He flexed his fingers experimentally, trying to stop the minute shaking. It didn’t work. He looked up and Tony was looking back at him, his eyes dark with something and his expression solemn.

“Are you OK?” Tony asked cautiously. Steve gave a quick nod. He shoved his chair back, rattling the dishes on the table, and got to his feet.

“I’m just going to …” he cut himself off and gave a quick jerk of one hand in the direction of the doorway. “I’ll see you later, Stark.” Tony’s expression closed down and he nodded as he slipped on colored lenses. Steve turned away.

He woke with a gasp, like rising from a long tunnel of ice.

Steve looked down at his hand. It was trembling. He flexed his fingers experimentally, trying to stop the minute shaking. It didn’t work. He looked up and Tony was looking back at him, his eyes dark with something but his expression playful.

“Are you OK?” Tony asked, his mouth quirking up in a smile. Steve gave a quick nod and surged forward, hot with sudden desire, capturing that mouth with his lips, bearing Tony down onto the bed still half clothed.

He woke with a gasp, clutching the edges of the narrow cot and propelling him upward.

“Are you OK there, punk?” Bucky growled from the other side of the tiny room.

“Yeah. I’m … yeah,” Steve replied, his heart in his throat.

Steve looked down at his hand. It was trembling. He flexed his fingers experimentally, trying to stop the minute shaking. It didn’t work. He looked up and Tony was looking back at him, his eyes dark and his expression solemn.

“Are you OK?” Tony asked cautiously. Steve gave a quick nod. He shoved his chair back and got to his feet. He swayed there for a moment and Tony got up as well. “Are you sure? You’re looking a little pale. What’s wrong?”

“Déjà vu,” Steve muttered. “Really intense déjà vu.” He passed one hand over his eyes, rubbing them lightly. Then the bottom dropped out of everything and he was falling, spiraling into the deep icy water below, going down.

Steve looked down at his hand. It was trembling. He flexed his fingers experimentally, trying to stop the minute shaking. It didn’t work. He looked up and Tony was looking back at him. “Are you OK?” Tony asked cautiously.

He shook his head. “No. No … I’m … I keep reliving the same conversation with you with only slight changes and …” he cut himself off and passed one hand over his eyes, rubbing them lightly. “I’m not OK.”

Tony’s hand dropped onto his shoulder companionably and he said, “Hey, don’t worry. You’re fine. And the déjà vu thing? I know it feels like that sometimes when I talk, but -.”

“No,” Steve interrupted him tiredly, leaning into his touch. “It’s the same moment over and over again, with just tiny changes.”

“OK. OK. You know, the human brain reacts pretty strangely to stress. I mean, take it from me. I should know.” Steve let the words wash over him as Tony continued. “I’m going to have Bruce meet us in the clinic and we’ll do some scans, just to make sure everything is OK. Then he can prescribe yoga and herbal tea and -.”

“Tony,” Steve interrupted. “I am not OK. Why can’t anyone see that?”

Tony stared at him.

Steve swam up toward the distant light, hauling himself hand over hand around the curved railing. Next to him, Thor kept marching up the stairs. “The lines of the universes are matching up,” Thor said grimly. “This is the center. Everything is turning around this point in dimensions you cannot conceive.”

“So not a portal then.”

“No. Much worse. This could be the end. It could also be the beginning. Unless we can pinch ourselves off, cauterize the wound that’s left behind.”

The waves rocked the boat gently. Tony leaned over and put a hand on Thor’s knee. “What about the time jumps? I know they’re happening. Like … like events are being overwritten.”

“But their shadows remain underneath. Aye.” Thor nodded and covered Tony’s hand with his own. “It will grow worse if we do not find the mechanism to stop it.”

Tony took a deep breath and said, as if it pained him, “Technological or magical? The solution?” Steve huffed out a laugh and shook his head, dizzy from the climb. He looked up at the spiral staircase that seemed to curve into infinity above them.

He looked up at the spiral staircase that seemed to curve into infinity above them.

He looked up at the spiral staircase that seemed to curve into infinity above them.

Je ne vois qu’inifini par toutes les fenêtres _from Le Gouffre (The Abyss) by Charles Baudelaird, Les Fleurs du Mal_

He looked up at the spiral staircase that seemed to curve into infinity above them.

I never saw a vessel of like sorrow. What?

 

**Freedom of Information Act Document Request**

At that point [redacted] window [redacted] and then [redacted] the house [redacted] notwithstanding [redacted]. Drs. Banner and [redacted] insane [redacted] Ground level [redacted] [redacted] house.” [redacted]  It is postulated that the cyclical nature of the [redacted] Stark. [redacted]

Section from documents obtained through a FOIA request by Virginia Potts, 01/17/13

 

“Why is it that whenever Tony Stark’s name comes up I’m the go-to journalist? No, seriously, I want to know.” Christine fussed with her napkin, checking the creases to make sure they were sharp. She frowned. One of her finger nails was slightly ragged and it caught on the thick white cotton cloth.

Her friend looked across the small bistro table with a dirty smirk. “Because everyone knows you have an in with him. At least, more of an in than anyone else.”

“One time, Risa! One time.” Christine lifted her glass to cover the smile she knew was on her lips. “One very good time.”

Risa shrugged. “That’s one time more than anyone else who’ll be at the press conference.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Christine said darkly. Then she flashed a brief, humorless smile. “Maybe we should start a club.”

“Don’t tell me you have any regrets.” Risa looked at her.

Christine shook her head slightly. “No. He was everything he was advertised to be, and he didn’t lead me on. I knew what I was getting into. I won’t deny he goes down on a woman like a champion, and he seems to enjoy it unlike most men I’ve been with. It’s just … I would rather not have to talk to him anymore. I feel … I feel like he thinks I’m one of those delusional people that follows him around wanting table scraps.”

“Well, you are a reporter. It’s kind of part of the job description.”

“Ouch, Risa. Ouch.” She laughed shortly.

 

“Sir?” Hill’s voice came from the doorway. She waited.

Flicking away the file on Tahiti, Fury replied somewhat impatiently, “Report, Hill.”

“We just located the Iron Man armor.”

“Stark in it?” Fury set down his tablet then and looked up at her. She straightened her shoulders.

“No, sir. There’s a recording or something that advised the agent who found it that it is empty but that we shouldn’t touch it.”

Fury huffed a laugh. A recording. Sure. He replied. “OK, then don’t fucking touch it. I don’t want any problems about proprietary technology with Pepper Potts and for all we know he has it set to blow up if we get too close. I don’t suppose Stark left us a message with the … recording?”

“No, sir.”

“OK, here’s something else that makes me angry. Ancient Aliens. I know, I know, what am I doing watching the History channel?” He stopped to take a breath, hand pressed lightly against the dark arc reactor in his chest. He could feel his pulse beating in his throat, hear it throbbing against the tiny bones in his ears. He took another deep breath then resumed walking, the sand shifting under his feet. “Yeah, so Ancient Aliens. Why do we sell the human race short like that? Ever since I was a kid I remember people wanting to give aliens credit for the things people have done. Remember when Dad caught me reading _Chariots of the Gods_? He fired the maid who brought it into the mansion and almost broke my fingers slapping it out of my hands.” He shook his head. “But he was right.”

“So, anyway. Ancient Aliens. One time I was up late working and I dropped by the common area to get a refuel and I didn’t actually even realize anyone was sleeping over and Cap was hanging out on the sofa watching TV and he was watching fucking Ancient Aliens. Ridiculous.” He stopped to breathe again. “Fuck.” His heart rate had kicked up again and the undersuit seemed to be constricting his breathing even more. “Fuck this.” He shook his head, then started walking again.

“Speaking of Cap …. Did you know he goes to church? He hangs out with a literal Norse god and he still goes to church. That’s so weird. I mean, my mom went to church, but …. Hey, did you read those two studies that seem to confirm Jeremy England? Order out of chaos, possibly confirmed.” He sketched a check mark in the air.

 “I mean, they’re computer simulations obviously, but they look pretty solid. ‘Extreme forcing’ – I wonder if Bruce has read the results yet? I’ll have to send them to him just in case.” He paused, breathing hard. “Seriously, fuck this.”


	7. The Broom to Sweep Us All Away

_“One dimension of my music bears the imprint of a long time spent in the shadow of death.” - György Ligeti, composer of Requiem_

 

Question: Can you describe the house?

Answer: Maybe? I mean. It just doesn’t make sense.

Question: Try. How many floors are there?

Answer: You, um, you climb up the three steps to get to the front door. It’s on piers, you know, because it’s in an area that floods. So there’s a crawlspace under the house although you can’t see it from the back because there’s  a lot of overgrown Carolina Jasmine in the back. Anyway, so that puts you on the first floor. Then there’s a spiral staircase that leads to two floors above, although the last one isn’t much bigger than a room.

Question: And above that?

Answer: Nothing. There’s nothing there.

Question: Doesn’t the staircase lead up through the roof?

Answer: Oh, yeah, uh. Um, there’s a door at the top of the stairs. I really don’t like to go there … or even talk about it.

Question: Why?

Answer: If you … if you go through you might be in the widow’s walk. And you don’t know what you’ll see. But sometimes … no.

Question: Sometimes what?

Answer: Sometimes you end up somewhere else.

Question: Where?

Answer: Just … somewhere else. Anyway, there’s nothing there.

 

**INTERVIEW 12: STEVE ROGERS**

Fury: OK, Captain Rogers, tell me what happened. How did you get out of the house?

Rogers: We were walking, on and on, in the darkness. I was behind Natasha, Thor was behind me. Or … I don’t remember. I think Thor was in the front.

Fury: What about Banner?

Rogers: I don’t … I don’t know. I can’t… I can’t remember. He was already gone though. And we never saw Clint or Tony. I never saw Tony.

Fury: Then what happened?

Rogers: Then we heard that sound, the scream of the … [laughs nervously] we were calling it the monster.

Fury: The monster?

Rogers: Yeah. It … it was behind us, maybe about 20 feet back, and then suddenly it was in front of us, close by. We turned and started running the other way and … [long pause]

Fury: Captain? Captain?

Rogers: What?

Fury: Was it the Hulk? Was it Banner?

Rogers: No, it was … it was like a wild beast … like a wolf or … like a demon, I guess.

Fury: A demon. Or a wolf.

Rogers: Yeah. So we … we ran the opposite direction, in the dark, and suddenly Natasha and Thor … it was like they were jerked away. To the side. Where the wall … where the wall was. And so I turned to find them and the monster was right there. And … [long pause]

Fury: And?

Rogers: And I closed my eyes and waited, just listened to it breathe. My legs were shaking and I couldn’t think. I felt so cold and then the air tasted like blood and … maybe aspirin? And …. I think I actually … I think I fainted. And when I woke up I was sitting in the yard outside of the house.

Fury: How did you get out?

Rogers: I don’t know. This is the chase: I am gone for ever. [Exit, pursued by a bear]

Fury: … I’m going to have to order you to speak to that SHIELD therapist we assigned you, Rogers.

Rogers: Yeah … yeah. OK.

 **END OF INTERVIEW 12**  


 

Bruce smiled, looking around the workshop. “I never thought this would be possible.”

“What?” Tony asked absently, stripping out of his jacket and shirt and tossing them on a clear work surface. His tie had been discarded somewhere between the lobby and the workshop. Underneath, he wore a white t-shirt that muted the blue light in his chest. His arms were muscular and his shoulders were broad. Bruce swallowed.

“Being in a lab again. Being able to … to do the work again.”

Tony looked at him then, actually met his gaze for an instant and smiled. “Candyland, Bruce. I can even build you your own lab, if you want.”

Bruce nodded. “That would be great, Tony. I … thanks.” He stood twisting his fingers.

“Well, come on,” Tony said impatiently. “I want you to meet DUM-E. Wake up, boys. Daddy’s home,” he called, seizing Bruce’s arm. Bruce allowed himself to be tugged along, hyper aware of the warm of Tony’s broad fingers on the skin of his forearm.

“Light it up, JARVIS,” Tony said and a thousand points of blue light lit up the space.

“Welcome back, Sir.” The voice echoed throughout the large room.

“This is Bruce Banner. I know you’ve already done your research.”

“I have. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Banner.”

“Um … likewise. Jarvis?”

 

 

“Did you hear that?” Steve whispered. “It sounded like the Iron Man repulsors charging up, didn’t it?”

Thor cocked his head, unseen in the dark. “Perhaps.” He continued running his hands over the wet earthen wall as they walked. “We must keep moving, Steven. We must find the way out. I will not walk in the dark forever.”

_“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows.”― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View_

Steve squeezed his hand and said, “Can we fly out? Can you use Mjölnir?”

“I would, were we in the Midgardian realm you deem reality. However, we are in a … I think here you would say, a pocket. I do not know how we would fare if I attempted to fly. But do not worry, Steven. Mjölnir is more than just a tool for combat or flight.”

“What else can it do?” Steve swallowed as something small and wet twisted away under the hand he trailed over the wall.

“She can bless us as we enter and leave life and when we marry. She has brought back the dead upon occasion. The music of her blows creates a ward of protection around those she would aid. She represents the law that protects good people from evil.”

“So … are you saying that the law is a weapon?”

“That’s very metaphorical of you, Steve. You are a poet as well as a soldier,” Thor’s voice was full of laughter. “I suppose that I am. But isn’t that the basis of all law, the ability to defend a society, to defend the rights of the people, from enemies both within and without?”

“Sadly, you’re probably right,” replied Steve.

“In my culture,” said Thor, “as, I think, in yours to some degree, we imagine our community, people, the Aesir, as a small place of order in the middle of a sea of chaos. And we must do what it takes to hold off chaos. Or, as Jane would say, entropy.”

“What would you say?”

“Innangarðr and útangarðr. You are either within the fortress wall, and safe, or you are outside of the fortress wall, and lost. You and I, and the others of our kind, we stand at the gate and on the walls and defend the fortress with our lives.”

Steve thought for a moment, placing one foot methodically in front of the other as he did so. Then he asked, “Do you really think that? That we’re surrounded by chaos, beating at the walls of civilization?”

“Did you see the structure they call the Seawall when we arrived in this place? The barricade between the sea and the community on this island?” Thor’s free hand slapped against the wet soil, spraying them both with tiny particles of moisture.

“But what about those outside the community? How can we just write them off, abandon them? Isn’t that just like what people did back before the war, judge people from some races, religions, or countries as less than human because they were outside of a given community?”

“I do not speak of petty distinctions such as that,” Thor replied. “If you and I can belong to the same category, then all dwellers in Midgard are surely one community. Ay, and denizens of many races across the universe as well. All one, whether we like or not. But do you not believe in the existence of evil?”

“I … I guess.” Steve thought for a moment about the dust in the confessional and the worn thin leather covers of his mother’s bible, the faded Latin on the onion-skin pages.  And about a nuclear warhead, sent by the people who were supposed to guard over this terrible world.

 

“All I know,” said Bruce, setting down his water glass, “is that once we’re in this, we’re stuck. There is no way out.”

Natasha reached across the table and snagged the basket of garlic bread. “What do you mean?”

“I think we have created a new reality, just by doing what we’re doing,” Bruce replied, staring at his plate. “And to a lesser extent by being who we are.”

Tony dragged his fork through the thick red sauce before looking up. “Are you saying it’s our fault that the threats are escalating?”

“Maybe” Bruce hunched his shoulders, intentionally making himself smaller. “And maybe when we made the choices that we made, we put our feet on a particular path and now we’re committed.”

“The closing down of possibilities,” Steve muttered. Next to him, Clint took another enormous bite of pasta and checked his phone while he chewed.

Tony raised an eyebrow at him. “Determinism, Cap?”

“No. Just … sometimes once a choice is made, you can’t go back.” Steve looked at Tony and then at Bruce. “We just have to find a way to be OK with that. If you go down one road, you have to commit to it because the other roads disappear behind you.”

“Aw, Steve,” said Clint, clapping him on the shoulder. “That was poetical.”

 

 

The movement of the stairs was sickening. Every time a section spiraled loose and pulled away, it felt like he was falling all over again.

_“This propensity of the human mind to reject incoherence and decipher random marks and noises and shadows and patterns until they become intelligible as messages, signs, tales, and portents emerges in pride of place  in theories of creativity…. The unreliability of sensory perception and its intercommunication with the brain began to be understood more fully as a natural limit to cognition, not the work of supernatural (demonic) powers.” – Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century, 2006_

The first to be lost was Thor. A huge cracking sound had rent the air and when Steve turned to look back, Thor was just gone and Natasha was standing gray-faced in the dimness. Behind her, the stairs dropped away in a spreading fractal that made him lightheaded. He had said, “Where’s Thor?” and she had shrugged and urged him onward.

When Natasha was lost, there wasn’t even a sound. Just emptiness. And Steve was utterly alone, locked, going down into the sea. The turned the shovel and tipped dirt onto the remains of the world and buried it.

Now, Steve climbed an endless Mobius loop, clinging to the railing as the staircase tried to peel him off. The constant dizziness made him physically ill in a way he hadn’t been since before the serum, but he stubbornly refused to be removed. Each step dragged him further from the monster and, hopefully, closer to an escape. Once he got out, he’d find a way to recover the others.

When he actually reached the top of the stairs, it was anticlimactic. Although his brain told him he still had miles of spiral to go, when he walked straight into a wooden surface he knew that he was there. He stepped slightly back for an instant and took a deep breath; then he reached out to touch the door, his stomach turning over and his head aching. He took another deeper breath, ice rattling in his chest like pneumonia, and forced the door from the embrace of the swollen frame and stepped out.

Instead of sky and light, he was surrounded by darkness, deeper than night in front of him and shadowed behind by the doorway to the roof of the house. He took another step and the faint light disappeared behind him. He heard a gasp, an inhalation that cut off unevenly. “Tony, is that you?” He reached out blindly in the dark, expecting to hit the cold metal of the Iron Man suit. Instead, his fingers brushed the slick fabric of the undersuit. He grasped it and hauled Tony toward him, wrapping both arms around the smaller man as they sank to the ground. Tony was shivering and he felt cooler than normal under Steve’s hands. There was no blue light and no subtle vibration from the arc reactor.

“Tony, what happened?” In vain, he touched his forehead to the other man’s so that, if the darkness had not been absolute, he would be looking into his eyes from only inches away.

Tony cleared his throat, “He ate my heart.”

“Tony!”                                                                                                                                                

“Do you know the song, Bruce? He’s a monster.”

“Tony, you’re scaring me,” Steve said, his voice rough. “What’s wrong?” He carefully cupped one side of Tony’s face with his palm and moved his other palm lightly over his chest, seeking the arc reactor. When he brushed against it, a clearly outlined circle framed by the smooth undersuit, Tony jerked away from him with a small, desperate sound. “Tony, Tony, it’s OK. It’s Steve. Cap. I’ve got you. I won’t hurt you.”

“Steve?” Tony relaxed against him and Steve embraced him again.

“Yeah. It’s me. What happened? Where’s Clint?”

“Where are the others? Where are we?”

Steve grimaced. “I don’t know. I thought I was headed to the roof, but it feels like we’re pretty far underground.”

Tony shuddered in his arms. “We’re under the water.” There was a hysterical edge to his voice that Steve could sympathize with.

“I think so. Shit,” he said. He felt Tony shake silently against him. “This may be an understatement, but I don’t think Fury told us everything.” He tightened his arms. “Tony, why were you … singing a Lady Gaga song?”

“I was?” Tony’s tone was puzzled. Then he laughed softly. “I don’t know, Cap. I might be losing my mind.” Steve pressed his lips to the side of Tony’s head. “Can I ask you something, though?”

Steve nodded. “Uh … yeah.”

“Since when do you listen to Lady Gaga?” His voice was almost back to normal, though Steve could tell it was a struggle. He chuckled.

“You know how much time I spend in the gym. JARVIS makes excellent workout playlists.” He leaned his forehead down cautiously, lightly touching it to Tony’s hair.

Tony nodded against him. “Where the hell are we?”

“What’s the last thing you remember before you were here?” Steve asked.

Tony jerked a little, his forehead knocking against Steve’s. “I was back in … I was in the cave.” His voice was rusty and his breaths came fast and shallow now. “I was … they cut out my heart … and the water -.”

“Hey. It’s OK,” Steve said, running a soothing hand up and down Tony’s back. “It’s OK. You’re with me now. I was climbing this endless staircase. I was with Thor and Natasha and we were climbing in the dark, trying to get out of this damn house.”

“I was in the cave, over and over again. I was tied down. He kept putting the arc reactor in my chest,” Tony said heavily. “I kept seeing pieces of my body on the dirt floor.” He jerked again and fell silent.

Steve’s eyes burned. “It’s OK. It’s OK. They’re just dreams or … or memories.”

“They feel real. And if they feel real, maybe they are real.”

“Hey, would I lie to you?” Steve tried for a playful tone.

“Maybe.” Tony sounded so wrung out and exhausted, that Steve couldn’t help put press him close.

  


_“The careful observations and the acute reasonings of the Italian geologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the speculations of Leibnitz in the 'Protogaea' and of Buffon in his 'Théorie de la Terre;' the sober and profound reasonings of Hutton, in the latter part of the eighteenth century; all these tended to show that the fabric of the earth itself implied the continuance of processes of natural causation for a period of time as great, in relation to human history, as the distances of the heavenly bodies from us are, in relation to terrestrial standards of measurement. The abyss of time began to loom as large as the abyss of space. And this revelation to sight and touch, of a link here and a link there of a practically infinite chain of natural causes and effects, prepared the way, as perhaps nothing else has done, for the modern form of the ancient theory of evolution.” ― Thomas Henry Huxley, The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century_

The darkness was twisting, ropes of gray fabric spiraling wetly against a flat field. The roar was monstrous, so deep and loud that it rattled their teeth. Thor held up his arms, blue white light streaming from his palms. “I must try to stop the turning, the incursion,” he called over the building sound.

Bubbles of brown water foamed out of the fabric as it twisted and, when Bruce squinted, he could see a tiny world in each one. The foam came thick and fast, the tide rising higher and higher on the sand, engulfing the dunes and throwing up a rim of trash. The water, over his mouth and nose, and Tony was fighting and thrashing and panicking and choking, electricity from Thor’s hands running through him, and Steve tried in vain to hold his breath but the cold water froze over him, chunks of salty ice tearing his lungs open, copper blood in his mouth as his eyes froze from within and around him the plane died.

Clint seized his arm, pulling him away and off balance. “You’ll drown,” he screamed against the wind. “Fall back!”

Natasha fell to her knees in the snow and looked up at her trainer. “Убей ее, иначе ты умрешь,” she said, so Natasha raised the pistol.

“Thor, finish it!” Clint said urgently, his hand palm flat against the Asgardian’s back. “It’s all coming apart.”

He gathered his strength and drew back the bow, the pain singing in the muscles of his arm and back with the strain. When he released, time’s arrow skipped over the water, glancing off possibilities, rending worlds as they burst.

It was the archer? The human?

How did we not catch that? Damn it! All of this –

It’s unwinding, ma’am! I can’t stop it.

Reroute all power to the temporal –

It’s too late!

Too late? That’s nonsense. There’s no such thing as too late here. Reroute –

There isn’t enough here. You want me to stitch it all together, but it’s all in fragments.

That’s your job!

It’s fragmentary. I think we can piece together the main sequence of events, but there’ll be lots of missing details. And as for what it all means … well, I just don’t know. If it was Barton … we need to know more in order to analyze all of the repercussions.

That’ll have to be good enough. Analysis is over-rated. OK. So, let’s try to put this puzzle together.

It’s fragmentary  fragmentary  fragmentary fragmentary the house. It’s fragmentary -.

Not again. Damn it. Can somebody fix this for me? I need a technician here!

The ocean the ocean the ocean of stars beating against the shore of earth. The storm. The storm.

[unintelligible]

Well? What did they say about it? Did we pass the cusp? Did we survive?

[unintelligible]

That’s not very helpful. How would I know?

He gathered his strength and drew back the bow, the pain singing in the muscles of his arm and back with the strain. When he released, time’s arrow skipped over the water, glancing off possibilities, rending worlds as they burst. His own eyes blue and cold, peered at him from the hallways of the helicarrier. Blood on the floor. His own eyes, laughing, reflecting back from small faces. His own eyes, uncomprehending, as the world flowed by in silence and Barney shook him by the arm. His own eyes. Time’s arrow skipped over the water, assassinating possibilities and whole worlds, in order to save one.

“It’s what I do, Cap,” he drawled, twirling an arrow between his fingers and dropping the game controller on the glass table with a small click.

“But it doesn’t bother you?”

“I’m an assassin. A spy. I go where SHIELD sends me, I make the kills I’m instructed to make.” He shrugged.

“How do you know they’re the right … kills?” Steve said uncomfortably, the light from the game menu washing over his pale face.

“I have to trust my … handler,” Clint said, struggling a bit on the last word. “I have to trust the organization I work for.”

“Do you trust them? Trust Fury to make the right calls?”

 

 

Bruce ran his hands lightly over Tony’s shoulder as they both looked out over the lights of the city. “I’m not used to being this high up.”

Tony turned and set his back against the glass, his expression strange and open. He hooked a finger between the buttons of Bruce’s shirt and pulled him forward. Bruce let himself be shifted, planting his palms against the glass and leaning into Tony’s body.

“Did you tell the Black Widow we had sex in the shower?” Tony asked, his mouth quirked up in a grin.

Bruce smiled widely, green thrumming through him. He nodded.

“Bad boy,” Tony whispered. “I thought that might be real.”

Bruce leaned into him then, his skin prickling with energy. “I want you.” He mouthed the words against the other man’s skin, into the shell of his ear, into his hair. “I want you now.”

Tony groaned a little, his eyelids falling and his chin tilting up and to the side. “Say it again,” he demanded. “I can feel those words everywhere.”

“I want you.” The room shifted and Bruce was hovering over Tony, his hands sinking into the deep mattress. Beneath him, Tony shifted fitfully, reaching up to pull Bruce down into him. Tony’s lips against the stubble on his jaw, Tony’s teeth teasing the skin of his earlobe, Tony whispering, “Are we still in danger?”

Bruce pulled back. “What?” There was a grain of sand, a tiny irritant, trapped between the skin of his palm and the dark coverlet. “Tony,” he said, panic seizing him from within. “Where are we?” The star in his palm flared, glass painful.

Beneath him in the mud, Tony struggled feebly for a breath. “Bruce,” he gasped. “Big … Guy … don’t-.” Bruce looked down in shock to see his palm pressed against glass, blue light splintering out between his fingers.

Bruce chanted, “No no no no no” an endless loop of words as he felt himself turn inside out, spinning around the points of his bones and tearing, hands slick with blood, black mud, the rolled St. Augustine, the ladybug, the yellow butterfly, the waves choking them, the white sky, the tringle splinter of vision, the rattle of a text message, the stairs, the tiny roaches, the grunt in his lungs as he paced them far underground, hunting, the green tunnel where all green things go, the fires on the beach, the sharp taste of the sauce in his mouth, the rage, the rage, the rage.

He was on the beach.

He was on the beach, watching, as the water pulled back, exposed the floor of the world stretching out out out until the pull threatened to tear his flesh from his bones.

He was on the beach, when the storm began.

He was on the beach and the water was there and the sky and it was all white and gray, an endless prison.

“Bruce?”

He turned.

“Bruce?”

He turned.

“Bruce?” Suddenly Tony’s hand was on his arm and his face was right there and he looked -.

“Tony?”

“Are you OK, Big Guy?”

He looked at the house. “We can’t go in there.”

“Sorry, Doctor,” said Steve. “That’s the job. You can wait out here if you want.” The sky above was bleached white with just a few clouds standing motionless in the heavy air. Steve stood still for a moment, shaking the kinks out of his legs, his hand shading his eyes from the sun as he looked at the house. 

“No … Steve …” He fell silent.

“Steve?” Tony asked carefully. “Bruce, what’s going on?”

Bruce shook his head, looking down at the grass. The air was very still, but a few blades of parched and rolled St. Augustine ruffled as a ladybug climbed laboriously over them. Bruce shuffled over carefully to avoid disturbing it. “We can’t go in there. It’s a time loop or some kind of … I don’t know.”

“Well, yeah. Fury’s briefing says it’s a portal of some kind. Too dangerous to leave active,” Tony said dismissively.

“If we go in there … we’ll never get out.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t even know for sure that we’re out now. I was in there. We all were. And every time I got out, I ended up in there again.”

“What’s the last thing you remember, Doctor?” Natasha asked. Behind her Clint sighed and looked at the sky.

“We had finally escaped … and I was with Tony. And … and I think I killed you,” he answered, looking at the Tony. “We shouldn’t even get near that place.”

Steve looked troubled. “But … if you are still trapped there, then none of this is real anyway. If you don’t go back in, you’ll be living in a false reality.”

“And it could snap back anyway.” Tony nodded. “I agree with Cap. Besides, isn’t it better that we deal with it then some civilian? Right?” In the face of his encouragement, Bruce reluctantly nodded and Tony rewarded his with a clap on the shoulder. “OK, good. Problem solved. Let’s not hang around out here.” Bruce shook his head and smiled, looking down at the grass. The air was very still, but a few blades of parched and rolled St. Augustine ruffled as a ladybug climbed laboriously over them. Bruce shuffled over carefully to avoid disturbing it.

Clint stretched and said, “Finally. Shake a leg, team. Let’s make sure this mission is eggs in coffee.” Tony snorted and Steve grinned.

“Do you know what that’s called?” Natasha interrupted, pointing at the collapsing cupola on the battered roof. She walked around the front of the SUV and stood balancing on the cracked curb, flexing the muscles in her legs to stretch them a little. Tony cocked his head disinterestedly, then walked forward to jerk the padlock off of the battered chain link gate at the foot of the driveway. He dropped it into the grass with a dull chunk and then looked back up at the roofline.

“What? That?” asked Clint. “The tower?” He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck.  The house wasn’t fancy, no Victorian gingerbread or extravagant trim. It did, however, seem to have large windows, although they were currently boarded up with large pieces of weathered plywood. It stood on an overgrown double lot that had been roughly enclosed with chain link fencing that sagged under a heavy weave of weeds and vines.

“It’s a widow’s walk.” She smiled, a small and almost private expression. “A lot of the older houses on coastlines have them. For looking out to sea.”

 “Looking out to sea to see if you’re a widow,” replied Clint. “That’s not romantic at all.”

“I didn’t say it was romantic, Barton.” She strode toward the house. Steve stood for a moment longer, narrowing his eyes in the sunlight, and regarding the house. Then he followed her inside. As Clint fussed with his equipment, Bruce hung back, turning to look around at the houses around them with a frown on his face. Although this house was in the worst shape, none of the homes on this block looked to be in good repair. They all had the weatherbeaten look of buildings that had to withstand wind and salt water on a daily basis.

“Are you OK, Big Guy?” Tony said, waiting next to the open gate.

Bruce shrugged. “No. None of this makes any sense, and I feel like I escaped something terrible and now I’m voluntarily going back in.” He squinted up into the sun, the heat of a South Texas late summer on his face.

Bruce frowned at him and Tony raised his hands defensively, careful not to activate the repulsors. “Sorry! We’ll be careful, Bruce. I promise.” Bruce shook his head and turned to follow Natasha, leaving Tony on the broken sidewalk.

Clint said, “Come on. Let’s case the joint. Just this time, I’ll go low and let you go high, but just this time.” Tony shrugged, watching Bruce’s back as he entered the house, then flipped the faceplate down. The eye slits in his helmet glowed blue.

Natasha made quick work of the rudimentary lock on the door and then pried it open. The damaged piers had caused one side of the house to sag a little, and it wasn’t easy to wrestle the door open without further splintering the framing around it. As they walked inside, she let the door swing loosely shut, leaving a crack of bright white sunlight shining into the dim interior. Illuminated motes drifted through the slice of light.

They walked into the large main entryway. The main feature of the room was an oversized spiral staircase that rose up through the ceiling to the next floor. Bruce gazed upward, ignoring the slight feeling of vertigo that swept over him. He said, “Natasha … Steve … we need to climb these stairs. That’s where the anomaly is most of the time. And you need to be very careful because the Hulk is close to the surface.”

Steve looked at him. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait in the car, Doctor?”

“It’s too late for that.”


	8. Time and mercy is out of your reach

_Je te frapperai sans colère/ Et sans haine, comme un boucher,/ Comme Moïse le rocher/ Et je ferai de ta paupière,/ Pour abreuver mon Saharah/ Jaillir les eaux de la souffrance./ Mon désir gonflé d'espérance/ Sur tes pleurs salés nagera/ Comme un vaisseau qui prend le large,/ Et dans mon coeur qu'ils soûleront/ Tes chers sanglots retentiront/ Comme un tambour qui bat la charge! - Charles Baudelaire, L'Héautontimorouménos,_

 

“It’s too late for that.”

Natasha squinted at him. “Don’t Americans usually say, where there’s life there’s hope?” She slid one boot across the dusty floor. Steve had his back to them, peering around the room.

“You and I both know that’s a lie,” Bruce replied, trying to will his shoulders down from around his ears.

She shrugged. “Where do you want to start?” Illuminated motes drifted through the slice of light behind her.

“We have to go up the stairs.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It doesn’t look like it would hold our weight.” She gingerly brushed her fingers along the rough edge of the newel cap, her index finger following a split in the wood. “There’s been salt water in here. Look.”

“Natasha, we have to go up. It’s the only way.” He turned to Steve. “Cap, we need to go up. Please, just trust me.”

Steve faced him. “I think we should check this level first. Then, if we don’t find anything, we can try the stairs.”

“No!” Bruce clenched his fists.

“Doctor … Bruce …. Clint and Stark are checking the exterior and that includes the roof. If there’s something up there, they’ll find it.”

 

Tony blew out a breath after circling the house for the third time. Below him, the SUV roof shimmered against the hot street. He caught a glimpse of movement and swung wide to see past the scrub of vegetation along the perimeter of the lot. “Hawkeye, what are you doing down there?”

Clint looked up at him and then back down under the edge of the house where the shadow of the eaves cut across the grass. He knelt down and Tony felt his heart rate pick up.  Clint’s head and shoulders disappeared under the shadow of the house and then the rest of him vanished. Over the comm, he said, “There’s some kind of crawl space under here … I can see some objects under the house. It’s like a … a face and some … some stuff made out of metal. Oh, there’s a -.” Then there was slight white noise over the comm.

Tony groaned behind his mask. “Clint, don’t touch anything else. Get out of there. Clint? JARVIS, is his comm still active?”

“I cannot find the connection, Sir.”

“Clint! Clint! Cap, we have a problem.” There was no reply. “JARVIS, ping everyone, including Fury’s team.” There was a long pause. No responses.

“We appear to be cut off from everyone. How would you like to proceed?”

Tony snapped. “I don’t know, J. Should I disappear like Clint or like the rest of them?”

“I have no data, Sir. May I suggest that you do neither but instead fly some distance from the structure and attempt to contact SHIELD again?”

Tony considered, letting the boot jets drop him lower to hover over the street. “I can’t just leave them in there, J. What if … what if Bruce was right?”

“We could test that hypothesis by trying to move away from the house,” JARVIS suggested. “That is what I would recommend.” And then he was alone in the suit. JARVIS attempted to activate all of the suit’s sensors, but he had limited access to anything but audio and human visible spectrum visuals. He traced back through the logs and could not pinpoint the moment when Sir had disappeared. The suit was standing in the yard of the house, facing the street, and he couldn’t seem to move it. The road was full of SHIELD vehicles and Maria Hill was cautiously approaching the armor.

“Is Stark in there, Cline?”

A voice came from the side. “As far as we can tell it’s empty.”

Hill shaded her eyes against the sun and looked toward the house. “I don’t actually believe that.”

“Please do not attempt to tamper with the Iron Man suit,” JARVIS intoned.

Hill frowned. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. Cline, where’s the team? Have we been in contact with any of them?”

_“Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.”  ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale_

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/43926519@N00/29810176248/in/album-72157696352426662/)

 

“It’s too late for that.”

“Bruce, Big Guy … seriously, why do you torture yourself like this?” Tony asked impatiently, trying to pull him back down. “It’s fine. I’m all in. I want it.”

Bruce sat back on his heels. “Tony … how do we know this is real?”

Tony propped up on his elbows. “Why wouldn’t it be real? We were fooling around in the lab and we decided to come up to the penthouse to be more comfortable. Right?”

“It’s too late for that.”

Betty looked at him, her eyes filling with tears. “Bruce?”

“It’s too late for that.”

Natasha looked up from where Clint’s body lay broken on the sand. Her face was blank.

“It’s too late for that.”

“Bruce, Big Guy … seriously, why do you torture yourself like this?” Tony asked impatiently.”

“I should’ve stopped you … Tony?” He looked down. “Why do you trust me?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” He pulled his knees together, squeezing Tony’s hips. “Ow! OK. Fine.” Tony considered for a beat. “I trust you because you’re like me. We both … we both acknowledge the monsters that we carry inside. I like people who are … self-aware. Who have no illusions about who they are.” He ran his hands over Bruce’s thighs. “Now can we please get back to the fun stuff?

Bruce frowned, his head a fog. He shook himself. The air in the tunnel was wet, clogging his throat with the taste of mud and salt.

_“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale_

“It’s too late.”

“No. Just … sometimes once a choice is made, you can’t go back.” Steve looked at Tony and then at Bruce. “We just have to find a way to be OK with that. If you go down one road, you have to commit to it because the other roads disappear behind you.”

“What if they loop back around, Steve?” Bruce asked in a hushed whisper. “Could I loop far enough back that I could change what happened?”

He lay back on the table. Betty looked down at him, framed in the halo of the white surgical lamp. “Are you sure, Bruce?” she asked, her tone betraying her concern. “We can delay human testing. It’s not too late to change the plan.” He looked up into her eyes, saw himself reflected back, distorted. There was a clatter on the other side of the lab, the technicians wheeling in the rest of the equipment.

“Why are you showing me this?” he whispered, a tear starting in the corner of his eye and sloping down over his face.

“Bruce?”

A terrible scream tore the air like wet paper, old pictures spilling out, flashes of dead memories, things that had been washed away by the waves. He scuttled sideways, bent and broken like a crab, in his broad hands the tiny black cloud opened its mouth and screamed. Screamed again. Screaming.

“Hold onto him, Steve!” Tony shouted. “I’m not strong enough without the suit!”

“I’m trying!”

“The stairs,” Bruce said, tearing away from them, blood all over Steve’s hands. “We have to go up the stairs!”

“It’s too late.”

“No!” he said sharply, his voice taking on a guttural tone. “It can’t be. I need to go back.”             

“There’s no way out but down,” Natasha said gravely. “You know it’s the truth. We all have to go down in the end.”

“The world’s still turning,” he said, on his knees now, looking up into their faces. The water washed over his calves, rising slowly with each ebb and throb. “It’s not too late.”

“That’s what’s at the end of the road,” Steve said, his face sad. “Let go and let yourself fall.”

“Tony?” The world stuttered, jumping forward, and the water was at his chest. Tony was next to him, with a black portal where his heart should be. He looked down and there was a car battery in his hands.

“Don’t drop it, Bruce,” Tony said silently, his lips moving in the white noise. “Don’t drop it.”

 

**Fury: And then what happened, Dr. Banner?**

**Banner: Then they followed me to the top of the stairs.**

**Fury: Are you sure that’s what happened?**

**Banner: No. I’m not even sure this is happening.**

**Fury: So you looked around, didn’t find anything, and then you all exited the house and joined Barton on the lawn.**

**Banner: Yeah. He had found some objects. We were looking at them when we felt the ground move. We looked back at the house and it was tipping over.**

**Fury: The sinkhole.**

**Banner: So we backed up to the road and Steve called the local first responders to secure the area. Tony and Barton checked the surrounding houses and made sure anyone inside was aware of what was happening. Natasha moved the SUV further up the street to get it out of the way.**

**Fury: So the Avengers are just a well-oiled machine.**

**Banner: We secured the area and left it in the hands of the locals.**

**Fury: Is the threat gone?**

**Banner: I don’t know. Was there a threat?**

Steve laid his hands on the table, palms flat, and said, “We probably need to talk about what happened.”

Clint replied, “We don’t know what happened. How can we talk about it? Besides, I don’t want to go back into that house, even just in conversation.” He leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table. “We gave SHIELD the artifacts and we gave them our reports. It’s done. Finished.”

“Bruce,” Natasha said. “What do you think?”

He sighed. “I think I don’t want to know what happened.” He glanced at Tony who looked away and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I think we all went through something horrible, maybe inside our own heads, and the last thing I want to do is bring all of that back up.” He looked down.

“Do you think there was really something there?” Steve asked.

“Has anybody tried to contact Thor?” Tony asked abruptly. “I mean, he didn’t go on this mission with us, but some of you saw him there at the house and talked to him. Maybe there was something Asgardian involved.”

“You mean maybe this problem originated with Asgardian drama, just like the last one?” Clint said, his eyes narrowed.

“Maybe.” Tony stood up. “Anyway, let me know … or don’t. I’m going to be in the workshop. I have things to do that don’t involve dredging up every oogly boogly in my subconscious.”

Steve smiled. “OK, Tony.” After Tony had left, he looked at the others and said, “We’ll wait and see what Fury tells us. No need to borrow trouble.”

Clint nodded sharply and rose. “I’ll be at the range.”

Natasha got up. “I’m going to take a nap.” She picked up her current novel from the table and left the room.

“I’m going to hit the gym,” Steve said. “You’ll be alright, Bruce?”

“Yeah. I’m … I think I’m going to do some meditation. I need to bring my baseline down a bit. I’m still on edge,” Bruce replied. He watched Steve leave the room and then got up to return to his apartment. Once inside, he dropped down onto the bed and took a deep breath.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, Doctor Banner?”

“Is Tony angry with me?”

JARVIS was quiet for an instant. “I have notified Sir that you were asking after him; he has responded that you should not worry and he’ll see you in the lab tomorrow.”

Bruce lay back on the bed. “So he’s not angry?”

“He is upset. Perhaps it is because he found no answers in the Galveston investigation.”

“OK.” Bruce closed his eyes. “JARVIS, how do you know what’s real if you can’t believe the input of your senses?”

“I do not know. All one can do is react according to the stimuli. There is no other reality, as far as I can ascertain.”

Bruce pressed his forearm over his eyes and fell into a light daze. The room dimmed around him. He breathed in the calm and the quiet, letting his thoughts wash over him gently. At some point, he must have fallen asleep because later he felt the mattress dip beside him and that pulled him into consciousness. He rolled over on his side and opened his eyes. “Hey, Big Guy,” Tony said. “Whatcha doing?”

“Resting.”

“JARVIS said you might want some company.”

Bruce nodded, his stubble catching on the coverlet. “I’m scared this isn’t real,” he admitted quietly. “I’m scared that I hurt you. I’m scared that we never got out.”

Tony ticked off his fingers. “One. It might be real. It might not be. We don’t have a way to measure that, so we have to continue on as if it is real unless we have a reason to think otherwise.  Two. You didn’t hurt me. Three. See number one. But I think we did.”

Bruce closed his eyes again and murmured, “OK.”

 

 

 

 

 _“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing._ ” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale


End file.
